Social Media . The "must" in PR world

When we had the class talking about social media i was very happy. I could see myself in the right class. This is because i think that nowadays if you are not aware of the importance of this revolution you cannot have a successful career in Public Relation. I will try to touch the most important things concerning this new digital era in which we are living.

       Social Media overall

Social media is a method of communications. Social media tools facilitate these communications. To be effective in social media, whether as a marketer or just an ordinary participant, you must, first and foremost, communicate well.

Yes, social media tools are mostly driven by technology. But they are driven by technology to deliver a message or messages. You don’t trust your IT department to layout your print ad. Why would you trust them to run your blog?

As I’ve said before, we are in an era of technology transition. Communications professionals are learning quickly that to be relevant and effective in the age of social computing, there’s more to competency than communication skills. Technology has become a requirement of the skill set. Yet, so many communications professionals – from public relations to customer service staff and from copywriters to journalists – are horribly deficient in average computer understanding, much less that of web-based technologies and tools.

In my mind, social media is essentially public relations in the online world. Divide the category up by component — blogs, social networks, microblogging, podcasts/Web TV, wikis/collaborative software — they each ladder in some way to a component of public relations — writing, corporate communications, community relations, media relations, event management.

PR as social media owner in many ways also addresses the concern of the online community that marketers don’t belong. Assuming we can trim away the corporate speak and manage transparent communications efforts in years to come, public relations representatives are the least likely to sell and most capable of speaking as humans to humans, rather than up-selling hucksters to “consumers.”

" A good way to think about social media is that all of this is actually about being human being" Anthony 

Mayfield