Why Can’t We Be Friends!? Social Media, Public Relations & Journalism

Social Media & Public Relations

Social media and public relations, to the casual onlooker, seemingly go hand-in-hand. However, convincing businesses of this realization seems to be a little more difficult. For the better part of history, these two departments have worked separately – up until a few years ago, the social media world didn’t even exist! While social media may be the new kid on the block, public relations teams should not be kicking them to the curb any time soon. Essentially, social media is now allowing public relations to do what they’ve always done – just in an easy to access format. “Social media allows us to build real relationships over time, not fakes smiles put on during trade shows and events.”

Public relations is an crucial piece of the business puzzle, as they are the trained professionals in place to conduct damage control as well as deliver messages to diverse groups of stakeholders and audience members. Social media is now an incredible place to not only communicate but to help businesses sell and inform their audience members. The best way to determine how these two departments should work together is to look at your overall goals and how you truly define success in terms of your business. The answer does not lie in whether or not you need one or the other – the answer is how efficiently and effectively you choose to utilize both of these department’s talents.

Social Media & Journalism

While there seems to be a hard line between “traditional” journalism and “new” journalism; the solution should again lie in how you can combine these two methods into the best avenue for you and your business. In fact, those hard hitting traditional journalist should be relieved with these new advances as crowdsourcing is easier now than ever before.  There are thousands of citizen journalists that are posting photos and videos every day, helping to create a searchable database of archived and sourceable content. Journalists should not lose sight of those traditional skills of seeking out stories and hunting down facts; however, journalists can now use social media to build and maintain relationships with people, learn about others in an intimate and real way and reach out directly with story ideas.

 Questions to Ponder:

1. Do ever see Public Relations and Social Media teams truly becoming one? Or do you think that these teams should stay separate, but work together in a more efficient and cohesive way?
2. Do you think that “traditional” journalism is truly going to be overtaken by this “new” way of reporting? If so, do you see this has a bad situation or simply moving toward a more effective way of delivering stories?

Ta-ta for now!

listen-laugh-love

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Instagram | Pinterest | LinkedIn

---