We all know (PR prof’s) that there are 4 important steps for pulling up a successful PR campaign.

  1. Research
  2. Strategic Planning
  3. Implementation
  4. Evaluation

In the traditional Public relations, the success is evaluated on the basis of impressions.

I strongly believe that public relations as a discipline and an integrated department, should own the responsibility of social media across the spectrum of enterprise, products and solutions. I don’t think social media should be crammed into a silo with PR and forgotten about, but rather, employed across the organization with PR owning the responsibility of managing its implementation and internal education.

If one tries to compare an apple to an apple, public relations prevails over marketing, IT, HR and Executive Management when it comes to owning the responsibility for web strategy related to blogging, podcasting or RSS; social search; social networking; micro blogging and, to a lesser extent, web content management.

This is because “Public relation’s aim is to establish and promot a favourable relationship with the public for an organisation, brand, product or cause”. And this is exactly what one wants to achieve through social media – engaging and building relationships with key audience and general public at large.

In some agencies where the management  has understood this role (opportunity) and is asking the PR professionals to take charge of website content (a little intimidating for most PR folks), including management and engagement on social networks like twitter, Facebook (frightening), and  blogging/podcasting and are a close second in being responsible for SEO (you must be kidding!!!)

We all know that industry has changed. Now, more than ever, it is imperative to know that we are digital. We are connected, we are more social and we have more technology at our disposal than ever before. The society is local and more global at the same time, there is a different level of interconnectivity among organizations and individuals. I am in no ways suggesting that the old methods and mediums are redundant. We still need to understand media relations, crisis communications, event management and all the other sub-topics of PR. But all of them have taken on different environs in today’s world and we need to bridge that gap and learn some new stuff and unlearn some old methods.

Hope most of you guys will agree.

Please feel free to comment on the article. Criticisms are welcome!

Happy Reading

M