A trend in Public Relations that I am interested in is social media and how Public Relations professionals are using social media for real results in the work place. It was something that I was interested in because on March 9th Emily Lenard from Comet Branding came to talk to PRSSA about using social media to help your clients business grow. Comet Branding bases their services off of using social media as a promotional tool. On their website (http://cometbranding.com/) their informational statement is, “Comet is a unique kind of agency. One that helps clients match the power of message to the voice of its customers. Simply put, we help you use social media to achieve your business’s objectives.” Emily Lenard talked about social media in ROI which is the return investment factor. When working with a client, you have to make sure that you are meeting the objectives and that what the client is paying for, is what they’re getting. Sometimes that means that you have to think outside the box. Thinking outside the box could mean using Twitter and Facebook to promote the clients company in a positive light and using social media to expand the professional network and reach your targeted demographic. Something that I found interesting from http://www.proactivereport.com/c/social-media/social-media-roi/ was the statics on companies and how a lot of them don’t realize the positives in creating social media sites to help broadcast their company. A few of those statics that I was surprised at were only “23 percent of companies use social media analytic tools.” “Overall, over half of companies are using social media strategies to advance their companies but only 7 percent are integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy.” Something else that I found off of http://mashable.com/2010/03/16/public-relations-social-media-results/ was measuring ROI in business to business Public Relations. For a lot of the companies that were surveyed in the article, their main focus on using social media in business relations is to increase potential customers/clients awareness of their company and the companies service. The last article that I looked at http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2011/03/07/the-five-dumbest-things-pr-pros-do-with-social-media/ was an article that I found off of Twitter. This article reinforced what not to do on social media websites and how sometimes, they do not help gain positive publicity for your company. Some of the “accidents” that PR professionals are finding with social media websites include “repurposing press releases for Facebook and Twitter updates, maintaining the same formal board meeting type tone on social networks, using social media only to broadcast NOT to get feedback, treating social media as a one-person job within PR/Marketing and joining the shiny object band wagon without a strategy.” I feel that from listening to Emily Lenard from Comet Branding, who helps build social media sites for her clients, social media is a positive if it fits in the clients objective and if the clients are willing to learn how to use the social media sites to reach their targeted demographics.
