This series is based upon a presentation that I’ve been giving over the last year. There have been slight variations in the presentation each time I’ve given it depending upon the location in the most recent case studies related to a particular topic. Many people who have seen me speak will be familiar with about half of this content. However, there will be something new for everyone no matter if you’ve seen me once, twice, or never give a presentation on using social media and social networks for public relations.
So why are you here reading this post? There’s no doubt this is a timely, relevant topic when it comes to online marketing and public relations. If you’re a public relations professional it may be that you’re watching a bunch of techies and online PR hacks suddenly eat away at your client base.
If you’re a search engine optimizer, maybe you want to know how to get press coverage to enhance your SEO efforts. You’d be well served to pay attention to these posts.
Perhaps you’re in traditional advertising or marketing and still feel lost in the online space. These posts will show you that social media and social networking tactics aren’t out of your reach. In fact, in today’s marketplace it’s absolutely critical that you are utilizing these tools to enhance and add reach to your other online efforts as well as your off-line efforts.
If you’re a social media maven, or even a social media marketing newbie these posts will allow you to see how one of your peers finds success with the social media campaigns they execute for clients. ‘nuff said there.
If you’re in traditional media, this presentation may very well open your eyes to an entire new channel of opportunities as a way to source your articles and news stories. I’m contacted regularly by journalists asking me to help them dot their i’s and cross their t’s when it comes to understanding the social, political, and business-related impacts social media and social networks have on all of us. By understanding how I utilize social networks for outreach, promotion, business, and social ends, you’ll gain insight on how to best utilize these tools while covering your beat.
So specifically these posts will cover how I use social media to get access to traditional media outlets. This sounds counterintuitive considering that a lot of us who live in the social media bubble think we’re too hip and too important to focus our energies getting the attention of big media. If you’re one of these folks, I encourage you to keep yourself firmly planted in that mindset. You live in your bubble and don’t take time for the Old Gray Lady. All the while I’ll keep using these tools to get fantastic press coverage and dig up great promotional opportunities for my clients.
Lesson: New media and big media need each other. We need to stop acting like enemies and start working together for everyone’s best interests.
Now, I made a comment in the slide that big media is going to be dead in our lifetime. This has been a painful, slow death-march from a spectator’s perspective. I feel sorry for all the people that work in big media that see the end is near. They have to go to work wondering if today is going to be their last day at work. I feel bad for them because a bunch of yahoos and hacks snuck in during the dead of night and completely turned their lives upside down.
And that’s not to say they don’t hold major responsibility for this. A lot of the reason for these new media success stories, especially when it comes to blogs and online video, is not because the technology simply provided us a new way to publish our content online. Citizens have taken over the press machine because big media lost touch with those it serves and stopped serving the common good.
Now for all of us in social media, getting access to big media coverage is still critical to the success of our online marketing and pr campaigns for our clients. Moreover, if you come into the knowledge that you have the ability to get access to the top journalists and news outlets in the world, you have an obligation to put that into the mix when you’re creating campaigns for your clients. Anyone who’s in public relations and marketing online and solely focuses on social networks like twitter, facebook, and youtube as being the end game, should be fired. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t go after those audiences and produce content those audiences would enjoy. But to ignore big media and not utilize tactics that allow you to get access to big media while you’re promoting content on social networks is lazy and shortsighted.
Social media is powerful and extremely cost-effective. You’re reading this post because you or your clients have little or no direction on how to use these tools and to be effective at it. Over the next several posts we’ll redefine public relations and retool your efforts so that you can be effective on the web using social media and social networks as a couple of the pr arrows in your quiver.
In the next post I’ll cover some key points you need to take into consideration when diving headfirst into social media as it relates to public relations.
