Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Social Media Killed the Public Relations Star?

An alert from the front lines and a shameless Buggles reference. On Bulldog Reporter today, a provocative piece on the demise of media relations as we know it. The dire prediction is social media overruns all within two years.

Two years? Could be sooner than that.

Don Bates is the head of the study -- Bulldog has transcribed interview today. Three important nut quotes:

In 10 years, it will all come back around — there won't be distinctions like "traditional" and "social": there will just be "media." Right now, it's not that way — but some people are having a hard time with the distinctions.

Twitter can be quick and dirty and get people to link to you, and the notion of 140 characters linking to a larger story is certainly going to get more popular. But you have to focus on the content and links to the larger story to keep people's interest.

You also have to craft a personality online so people can know you.


Invest the time today in this story. It's far more than those three blurbs.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't think it'll kill PR or PR stars...you just have more avenues to do your job. The key is to use these social networks...aka Social utilities. I wrote a senior thesis on it, you should read it sometime. Gonna start reading your blog!

-Brady Holzhauer

Bill Smith said...

I beg to differ. The point in the piece is the rules of the old school media relations game are done, vanquished by the new wave. I think it is totally appropriate - just as video killed the radio star.