Port in a social media storm

Once again I have found myself totally out of the social media loop recently, but there seem have been some interesting goings on in the ever merging worlds of PR and social media this week, which have given a newbie PR like me a lot to think about. Due to the nature of my new job, social media will form a large and important part of the strategic campaigns I will be working on. Where there seems to be a pretty standard process to traditional media relations with certain dos and don’ts, PR practitioners still don’t seem to have such a straightforward rule book for social media relations. It seems apparent that we are still learning.

If you’re not aware of the this week’s storm which saw one agency being heavily criticised for its handling of a client’s social media arm, I suggest you check out the blog posts below and interpret them as you see fit.

http://www.wolfstarconsultancy.com/2010/05/12/pr-doesnt-need-to-get-social-media-wrong-this-time-vodafone-again/

http://adamvincenzini.posterous.com/my-response-to-the-wolfstar-blog-post-pr-does

http://www.wolfstarconsultancy.com/2010/05/13/response-to-comments-on-vodafone-post/

I’m not really interested in taking sides on this issue (as interesting as that may be). I am however interested in the implications of this issue for PR and social media, and as Stuart Bruce said; “highlighting an industry problem, and working together to fix it.”

This matter really seems to stress the two sides of PR and social media. The public side, and the stuff that is, more often than not, kept out of the public domain. Stephen Davies, for one, has shrewdly suggested that one implication of this could be that social media is not actually *that* social. What he means by this, is that our identities on social networks are purely designed for social networks. They are not really a true representation. They are how we wish to be perceived in a particular domain or field. Whilst there is of course rivalry within the PR industry, it is not that common for agency bashing to appear in the public domain, it is more a behind closed doors kinda activity. But perhaps these discussions should be more ‘social’?

Budding PR and social media officers like myself should be keeping our eyes and ears open for incidents like this. Something we keep hearing about is ‘blogger engagement’, but clearly there are ways of engaging with bloggers that are more successful than others. I have always been wary of blanket style press releases, but I’m sure they have been shown to work in some cases with the right hook. It just seems that this takes the personal touch out of blogger engagement which for me is one of the main factors of its success.

V interesting stuff...