Getting Social Will Help Get You Into All the Best Places

Twitter. Facebook. Digg. Linkedin…

A veritable who’s who in social networking (apologies if we missed a site or two)…names that typically evoke one of two reactions:

1. I know that Ashton Kutcher “tweets” and is probably quite successful at it, though I don’t know what a tweet is…and even if I did know what a tweet was, please tell me know how this can possibly relate to my business?
2. Can you believe I have 2,000 people following my Twitter account? (Which might prompt the sensible response: great, and to what end?)

Over the last several months we’ve received numerous e-mails and phone calls from vendors asking us to explain how social networking works—specifically, how Twitter and Facebook and blogs and Digg can be used and targeted in advancing a company’s marketing and public relations goals. What may at first appeared a fad, another over-hyped technology, or mode of communications, is clearly anything but. 

The media landscape has become scattered, which poses fundamental challenges to getting your messages out; what were once magazines have become blogs, as blogs themselves have morphed into Twitter accounts…hugely influential writers and consultants are gravitating to social media—particularly Twitter—where they have amassed large followings. This changing landscape has added another dimension to the way we, BackBone, do PR—and should get you thinking about new ways in which you can use social media to your advantage.

How the Landscape Has Changed – and How You Can Change with It

The advent—and eventual ubiquity—of e-mail changed the pace and tenor of B-to-B communications. But what e-mail giveth, it also taketh away. As more editors made clear their preference for e-mail communications—making phone contact almost verboten—it made it harder to cultivate the kind of one-on-one relationships that are the lingua franca of public relations. Moreover, the rise of aggressive spam filters put many editors, writers, and others behind often impenetrable electronic moats.

Over the past year or two, more and more editors and writers are either augmenting their reportage or feature writing with blogging or moving to blog formats entirely. Blogs as a medium tend to promote a more personal, even more informal style of writing. While it’s always been important to know a writer’s work—let alone beat—before attempting contact, blogs are more idiosyncratic in nature and provide more of an opening if you take the trouble to become familiar with that writer’s interests (even side interests) and style. Which is to say blogs are intrinsically more social in nature; the more you know about a writer, the more common ground you can find, and the easier it is to cultivate a relationship—the types of relationship that were more difficult to cultivate when e-mail (and more traditional reportage) ruled the day.  

To the extent that Twitter is a form of “micro-blogging,” much of the above applies, though the methodology in leveraging Twitter for public relations outreach is different. The mechanics are pretty simple: add selected Twitter accounts to those you are “following,” select how you’d like to get tweets and updates, and you’ll have little trouble keeping abreast of their latest thoughts, insights, and activities. The real challenge is in using Twitter to push out your messages, whether as a subset of your blog (more about this to follow) or as brief announcements. Say you are poised to announce a major product release or something else newsworthy—sending out a tweet or a series of tweets can be easily, quickly, and effectively disseminated to the list of people you’re following, who are in turn following you, or to select people who need to be made aware of this important news. The brief tweet can refer to a web site or a Facebook page where people can get a fuller message.

The emergence of blogs and Twitter—to name just two of the more effective social media tools—give just about any user, particularly a business user, a powerful communications platform offering almost unmatched immediacy and reach whereby you can build targeted audiences for your messages organically, virally, and geometrically…without the filters of traditional media.

The Components of Social Media-based PR

• Managing your blog. Many companies fail to get full value from their blog—or blogs—as they soon realize the time commitment required to make it successful. We work with vendors in developing blog ideas, drafting each entry, and posting once approved. We also submit to Digg and other content propagation tools to push your content to the wider online world. 
• Twitter: Twitter has often been referred to as “micro-blogging” as it enables you to keep people apprised of your thoughts or activities via 140 character “tweets.”  When you realize how many influential writers and consultants have Twitter accounts, some with sizeable followings among their respective communities, you begin to realize how powerful a tool it can be. We can work with you in integrating Twitter with your company blog, and in developing a communications strategy around your Twitter account.
• Blog and Twitter-centric PR: We maintain a database of top bloggers and those with active Twitter accounts across a number of industries—including HR, general/niche technology, and business. We keep in constant communication, issuing company announcements and developments to this highly influential group.

The ascendance of social media does not mean traditional media and what you might call traditional PR practice have been pushed to margins. As long as the BusinessWeeks and Wall Street Journals and Forbes are on the newsstand (or available online)…as long as trade publications have devoted and influential readerships (even as their pages dwindle and more content is moved online)…traditional media outlets still play a vital role—and will for the foreseeable future. Yes, many are struggling and in transition, but rumors of their demise are premature. 

Twitter and Facebook, as well as company blogs and business networking sites such as LinkedIn, are all important and increasingly effective tools—but they are even more so when used in concert with traditional media. Social media function very much like an extended echo chamber where messages are conveyed, sustained, and amplified; to borrow a phrase, marketing messages are, for the most part “platform-agnostic”—they may first appear between the pages of a magazine or on a mainstream web site, and then get propagated through social media channels…or they may flow in the reverse direction. Their point of origin may not in the end be as important as the path(s) they travel. In other words, a successful communications or PR program partakes of all available media—both old (aka, traditional) and new.

One of the lures of social media is its immediacy: any and every thought or piece of information can be communicated instantly and directly, without filters or constraints. Twitter’s stated reason for being is to give you the ability to let people know what you are doing at that very moment. If you are eating a ham sandwich, you can let everyone know that you are at that precise time “eating ham sandwch & wshing it dwn w diet Cke.” Communicating with family, friends, associates, and the greater virtual world in pithy 140 character “tweets” has obvious social use and value.