How Social Media is Changing Public Relations

What the web today is something many of us might have never imagined 20 years ago. Today we have voice and video conferencing to help us interact better, as well as social media to keep us up to date with each other’s lives through recorded videos and photos accumulated over time. Now, the web lets us share a moment together or engage everyone we know in a conversation when something interests us. Knowing this, there is no doubt that public relation strategies have moved to the web as well. In the past few years we have seen social media boost public relations in several ways:

1. Social media as a sole platform for conversation. In a recent study conducted by web trends, they discovered that the rate of page views on company sites were doing poorly next to their social media fan pages. Without a doubt, companies are now challenged to bring their pages to facebook to keep the social interaction of their users going. Any website that interrupts the conversation of the user, will be left behind.

2. Engagement can happen every hour. Whether it’s a retweet or a Facebook like contest, the sole ingredient in PR is customer engagement. The web, especially social media can do this for you. If you’re trying to expose a product, why not add it to the latest game craze on the web. Zynga seems to be ahead of so many in this arena.

3. Brand and product exposure. Public relations is all about being where everybody is and making conversation that is worth their time and effort. Product exposure is perfect on the web no matter how discreetly it’s placed. If it’s a trending topic on twitter, then better. However if your fans are simply sharing the good news, then great!

What PR strategies have you tried with social media and what have you learned? It’s never too late to get started!