Why PR Should Take Social Media Seriously

There are two parameters that help define PR, reach and influence and getting your corporate message out efficiently without filters is also vital in the age of digital media, where cynicism of the old methods is pervasive.

So why does Social Media need to be taken seriously?

1. It’s more believeable and trustworthy than the filtered mainstream media that has many vested interests
2. Its fast and effecient as it can be sent from smartphones before it even hits the traditional media channels (remember the Iranian Elections)
3. It has leverage. (One Friend tells another, who tells many more, who then tell others.. its exponential,and  it helps to have great original content or a good story)

 So what is the reach of Social Media? and which have the most Influence? When you look at the the players like Facebook and Twitter, and the other Social Media’s platforms numbers, the motivation for being involved becomes compelling and should negate any excuses about being engaged in Social Media.

Eight Major Social Media Channels

1. Facebook: The Premier Social Networking Site where you can add friends, post photos, share your life and join groups
2. Twitter: Share information, “follow” other people and get your information out as a “live” stream.
3. YouTube: It is the Social media channel where you can upload and share Videos, subscribe to channels and again add friends
4. LinkedIn: A social media site that operates primarily in the the professional networking and business relationships segment
5. MySpace: A social networking platform that enables the easy sharing  of  multimedia nd works well as a multimedia aggregator
6. Digg: A social platform that enables you to post your articles and others can vote on whther they like your story or not.
7. Blogs: An interactive way of sharing content informally and receiving comments
8. Wikipedia: The socially generated encyclopedia which is updated and edited constantly by the online community

Their Reach

• Facebook: Over 200 million members and 80 billion monthly page views (Techcrunch)
• Twitter: It now has over 44 Million unique visitors a month (according to Comscore)
• YouTube: Over 100 Million visitors in March and over 13.8 Billion video views in March alone (YouTube report)  
• LinkedIn: Over 16 million unique visitors a month with a a very affluent demographic where the average user is 39 and makes $139K ayear and over 500,000 C-level members (Quantcast)
• MySpace: Just under 100 million visitors a month and 43 Billion page views (Techcrunch)
• Digg: More traffic than the New York Times with 23 million unique visitors a month and 4.5 billion pages views (Techcrunch)
• Blogs: Over 5 million blogs are tracked by Technorati, the “Bible” of Blogs with 600,000 being corporate blogs (Technorati)
• Wikipedia: Nearly 63 Million Unique visitors June 2009 (Compete)

Note: If you want to look at some really interesting numbers have a look at (Future Marketing Trends at FutureBuzz.com)

So what is the Reach of the Old Media? and what does that say about their influence.. is it growing or waning?

• “USA Today” (largest read newspaper in the USA)  2.1 Million a day (Audit Bureau of Circulations) which if it was unique views per month of 63.1 million (which it isn’t it.. would still be 3 x smaller than Facebook)  
• AARP is the most widely circulated magazine in the USA and reaches 24.5 million which is slightly more than Digg (Audit Bureau of Circulations) but still 8 times smaller than Facebook 
• Fox News Channel (highest rated news channel for 90 months) has 15.6 million viewers a day (Huffington Post)..The same as the number of unique LinkedIn vistors sees monthly.
• Rush Limbaugh the largest talk radio in the States  has 14.75 million a day is less than half the 40 million unique visitors to Twitter each month (Talkers Magazine)

Note: 40 % of people blogged in 2008, 50% got their news online and 35% from print newspapers (Pew Research)

So what are some of the PR Values of the New Media?

• Twitter: You are able to listen and to respond to what people are saying about your brand in the market place within seconds with worldwide reach 
• Blogs: Corporate blogs provide “recency” by allowing companies to provide the latest information delivered by RSS feeds to customers that postion your company as a thought leader in their industry and getting its message out without “corporate speak” making the corporation seem human rather than faceless.
• Facebook allows you to improve customer satisfaction(thats good PR) by more than 17 times according to research done by the the Aberdeen Group 
• YouTube allows you take take control of your brands image on YouTube by creating an account and utilising its growing SEO priority in search engines , due to its increasing growth (over 53% last year) and growing importance as a Free Marketing, PR and branding medium, have a look at 5 reasons your company should be on YouTube in this Post by Small Biz Trends.
• MySpace provides more chance of getting your page viewed as its viewers average over 20 minutes a day as compared to CNN that averages 5 and a half minutes.
• Digg’s PR Values are to increase the visibility of your stories by having them voted on and increase your social networking opportunities
• LinkedIn allows you to communicate with highly affluent people that have the greatest  capacity to directly impact your business.

So in when someone is searching for your company and you want your PR to get out rather than someone elses message about your brand you need to  be across a range of social media. This gives your company the best chance of having your message seen and heard. If you do not join in the Social Media conversation, “it will take place without you” and you might not like what is being said.

In Summary Social Media’s Role in PR is about

• Efficient delivery of your message through ensuring that search engines find you easily (SEO..Search Engine Optimization), because you have optimised your Social Media (SMO… Social Media Optimization)
• Maximizing the level of  control over your message by being so high up in the search engine that you are the first 7 or 8 on page one, because you are maximizing your SEO through great content and spanning multiple boundaries of Social Media.    
• Ensuring that peoples different preferences for hearing your message is maximized because you have it in audio text, image and video in social media