Back in 2000 a little book was published that predicted the rise of what is now called social media. It’s called The Cluetrain Manifesto. You can read the original version free online.
In Chapter Four, Markets are Conversations, Doc Searls describes PR’s role in this new conversational world:
“They aren’t censors, they’re the company’s best conversationalists. Their job — their craft — is to discern stories the market actually wants to hear, to help journalists write stories that tell the truth, to bring people into conversation rather than protect them from it. In the age of the Web, where hype blows up in your face and spin gets taken as an insult, the real work of PR will be more important than ever.”
So as we enter a new year in a new decade, how does your work as a PR person stack up? Have you become your company’s best conversationalist?
How do you find the stories that the market really wants to hear? You have to listen to your audience and dig deep into that social graph to discern what kind of content you should be producing and who would be interested in it. There are tools out there that can help you with this, but a lot of it is your own intelligence and ability to see trends and opportunities in that content.
Journalists today are under a lot of pressure. More than 60% say they are tasked with producing audio and video material for every story they cover. They are covering more than one beat and they need sources and information. I have heard journalists say that they need PR people more than ever. But what they need us for is good content they can use. Can you make short, interesting audio and video clips to send with your news release? Are your news releases in social media format with embed codes for the multimedia assets, so the journalist can easily write his or her story with the information you have supplied?
The 2010 Adoption Surveys conducted by Dr Nora Barnes of UMASS, Dartmouth show that although the majority of companies and organizations are now using social media the number that are really bringing people into the conversation is still low.
There have been a few cases of hype blowing up and spin being taken as an insult recently.
Perhaps in2011 we can get closer to the Cluetrain vision of PR in social media.
