Social PR: It’s Sink or Swim in the Age of Instant News

Scary Fact: Did you know that 56% of top brands did NOT respond to customer comments on their Facebook page in 2011? — A.T. Kearney

PR has awesome power to build, maintain and protect brands, especially now, with the ever-expanding social universe at our fingertips. This has spawned an entirely new, but totally related, subcategory to the practice of public relations that we like to call #SOcialpr, here at Strategic Objectives.

It used to be that PR Pros targeted the mainstream media to make (or stifle) news for our clients. Today, thanks to the rapidly proliferating presence, and usage, of social networks, our sphere of influence must now reach out to widely diversified communities including social influences and bloggers/citizen journalists, employees, customers, shareholders, stakeholders and consumers themselves.

The implications of this dramatic change are significant and were the topic of my speech to #140ConfMTL, a meeting of social leaders and learners that took place in Montreal in May 2012. My speech entitled “#Social PR: It’s Sink or Swim in the Age of Instant News,” was recorded for posterity by conference organizers Mila Araujo and Joseph Haslam.

Deb Weinstein