Shaking the Social Media Blender: We're All Doing It

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By: Doug Bedell

In this social media era, it's hardly worth drawing distinctions between marketing and public relations any longer. Yes, they exist. But overall, reaching the public increasingly involves conversations on social media, whether you're in PR or marketing. Frank Strong, PR director for Vocus, refers to "integrated marketing" as being what the new Web-powered discipline is about.

"Conversations are a concept that effective PR people, especially media relations pros, have always understood," Strong writes on the Vocus blog. "Unlike traditional models of paying for advertising placements, PR was a dialogue where an organization earned the opportunity to speak with a journalist with an interesting idea that had value for a given media audience.

"Today, that same principle is applied in social media. We earn the right to have conversations with fans and followers with interesting ideas and two-way dialogue. The consequence has almost completely erased the blurring of lines between marketing and PR."

Whether people are listening or not depends on how effectively you appeal to them; engage them. That's always been a prime PR tenet; with social media, it's a marketing precept as well. We're all using a social media blender now.

Here, Ragan's PR Daily lists "5 emerging PR trends - and the skills they require." They don't sound much like traditional PR, and they aren't. They're in the new social media context.

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About the Author

Doug Bedell has a background in journalism and PR and is the owner of Resource Relations LLC in Central PA, focusing on organizational and crisis communication. He’s the community manager of SimplyFair.net, a social network on fairness. On the Web, Doug’s at www.ResourceRelations.com. On Twitter, he’s @DougBeetle.

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