Corporate marketing professional Sheldon Baker, widely known for nutraceutical industry brand development and marketing campaigns, writes a thoughtful column on the positives of social media for the PR professional. He says social media helps PR folks build more and new relationships across a wider landscape and maintain ongoing, quality relationships with influencers, media, customers and partners regardless of where they are. Read this column online:
Social Media Makes PR More Effective, by Sheldon Baker, principal and senior partner with the Baker Dillon Group (
BakerDillon.com)
Public relations (PR) has taken an alleged bashing in the past year and a half or so due to the rise of social media. But social media is actually a new tool that’s making PR more effective.
One of the most exciting things to happen to PR is social media. It’s opened up the opportunity for the industry’s story tellers and people connectors to do their job more directly - reaching influencers in ways never before possible, and extending reach well beyond media, which, until now, was the main measurement of PR in the eyes of many companies. It’s also helping define PR people and their experience. But things are changing.
Believe it or not, many PR agencies and practitioners discount social media and social networks as an important part of their job. They say it’s just a tool and some even think it doesn’t work. They are missing the point.
Social media helps PR folks build more and new relationships, across a wider landscape and in a sustainable fashion never before possible. Everyone is busy and social media enables professionals to maintain ongoing, quality relationships with influencers, media, customers and partners regardless of where they are. It is exciting to see PR going back to people and relationships. Successful PR people know how to build and maintain quality relationships, and today social media is a core part of making that happen.PR professionals in the dietary supplement and food industries should embrace social media tools on a daily basis to create a long-term community of their own among constituents such as peers, financial and business leaders, media and other groups. Beyond simply using social media tools in public relations campaigns,
PR people have the opportunity to showcase their human side and demonstrate their thinking on a day-to-day basis. By sharing information and thoughts in these communities, they can become more than just “flacks.” They can begin to directly influence audiences in their own right. They can demonstrate how they truly understand and care about the products, services and industry they (or their clients) work with daily.[By the way, speaking of that term (flacks), I never really did like it. I’ve always found it derogatory. It originated in WWI when our military personnel wore “flack jackets” to help fend off bullets and other foreign objects. A number of media folks in the San Francisco have called me a flack or asked who I’m flacking for. But it’s said tongue-in-cheek. So I go along with it.]
When looking for assistance with your PR strategy, find out whether the candidates are building a community of their own with a strategic, savvy reputation.
One of the biggest myths in the last year is social media experts—or however you refer to them—make PR obsolete and unnecessary. Many professionals have bought into the belief that anyone using a digital camera or iPhone, building a Facebook page or making a few Twitter updates a day, can now do PR. You gotta’ be kidding me.Sure, social media makes communication and promotions easier in many ways, but it doesn’t negate the need for professional PR experts. Did the ability to dial a phone or send an e-mail make everyone a PR maven? I don’t think so. Neither does social media.
PR professionals who are good at what they do still have a special knack for understanding psychologies of effective messaging and relationship building, the intricacies of good timing and the difference between effective promotion and positioning, as well as outright spamming. If the marketing activity on Twitter is any indicator, good PR is still needed.As a company owner or member of senior management overseeing marketing:
1. Give your PR person or team the freedom to utilize all the PR tools available to them.
2. Give them some space to maneuver and the time to develop a strategy.
3. And a meaningful budget would help, too. Rome wasn’t built over overnight. And neither was a solid, successful PR program that generated meaningful results.
Together, all of these elements help make PR more effective.