As part of the Social Media and Public Relations class I am taking this semester, we have readings and online lectures we have to view and blog about on a weekly basis. I personally am excited about this journey of identifying ways to better use social media in my current job, and learning about new techniques and tools that are consistently emerging in this ever changing space.
As part of the first lecture, “What is PR?”, we identified ways PR is evolving and how the definition of Public Relations is constantly changing as well. As one current definition by Cutlip, Center & Broom (2009) states:
Public Relations is the management function that identifies, establishes, and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the various publics on whom its success or failure depends.
I agree that public relations is moving from just working to get media hits, it is moving toward a two-way conversation with the audience, and we as PR professionals need to embrace social media to help make this conversation more accessible and flow. The PR agency I worked for used to (and still does) go out on field travel every summer to talk to the target audience, in this case farmers across the United States. I dreaded my first trip and didn’t understand the importance of it, I felt we could just pick up the phone and get the quotes we needed to include in the testimonial sheets we were tasked with developing. But once out in the field, I was able to gain a better understanding of the audience and what they were interested in. Not only that, but I was able to form relationships with farmers, sales reps, retailers and even technical service reps that I could leverage and build upon in the future.
These conversations now have the opportunity to continue on a more regular basis thanks to social media tools. The use of blogs, facebook, twitter, and forums allow for feedback and for the public to share their story. For example, http://www.syngentastory.com/ allows the public to share their story and include photos, video and audio clips.
What do you think? What ways have you seen Public Relations evolving? How are ways “traditional” Public Relations agencies can start to embrace this symmetry in communication with the public and weave social media tools into it?
