There was an excellent event last night on the impact of social media on PR, organised by Chinwag.
The event was very well attended – over 100 by all accounts – which shows how seriously many PR professionals are taking this issue now. Everyone on the panel (Mark Rogers from Market Sentinel, Neville Hobson from crayon, Jacqui White from Edelman and Stephanie Bonnet from Burson-Marsteller) had valuable insights to share.
It was nice to see the panel unanimously reject the proposition from someone on the floor that ‘the press release is dead’ – readers of this blog will know the press release is experiencing an revival thanks to online press release distribution.
I believe the most valuable comment during the event came from Sarah Chambers from Holiday-Rentals.co.uk. She pointed out that for many in-house PR professionals the issue isn’t so much understanding that social media is important – that much is already established – instead it is more a question of knowing exactly how to engage with social media.
I totally agree. PR professionals should be evaluating and sharing tactics for engaging with social media and pooling ideas on other ways of implementing online PR. It’s in the long-term interests of the PR industry to do this, you only have to read my whitepaper to see the reasons why.
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