I’ve recently see a lot of discussion in the SM world about the difference between PR and social media. The debate started after Twitter said they wouldn’t turn to PR to help communicate their numerous network outages. They claimed they would address the community and not use “spin.” Well seeing how half the folks on Twitter are in PR learning how to use the microblogging site to sell to clients and use internally, this set off a fire storm of conversations…in the community.
Now, if this is the new world of media, and everyone says this is what the world will turn to – that is away from traditional media – then why the journalists authored PR Spammers wiki? http://prspammers.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
If the new world consists of community and journalists are taking part in the community alongside PR professionals, why don’t they want to get pitched? Or is it that PR pros have forgotten the first fact of pitching – know the channel? Lots of firms are on that list that claim to have huge social media practices. Does that mean they don’t know what they’re talking about or that journalists aren’t ready for the lines of professional and private lives to converge?
This isn’t the first time PR pros have been outed for spam pitching. Sarah Lacy at BWeek wrote a scathing post on her blog in 2006 (and did it again) and recently the Wired EIC Chris Anderson published his blacklist of PR pros who hadn’t done their homework and pitched him with irrelevant “news” items.
I’m sure this debate has been going on since the beginning of both professions and will continue whether it’s over the phone, on email, in Twitter or whatever new shinny app that ends in ‘r’ comes along.
MC
*I do have journalists I’ve worked with and admired as friends on Facebook and follow more on Twitter.
1 response so far ↓
Laura Thomas // June 10, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Re: “Lots of firms are on that list that claim to have huge social media practices.”
The question is, though, are their social media teams separate from their other teams? This is not only an issue for agencies, but also corporate groups. It’s way too easy for those who don’t have a particular interest in integrating social media into public relations to simply leave it for those who do. This can lead to a division of labor, rather than an integration of new practices. And, I think that’s where it becomes possible for those who belong to an agency or corporation that supposedly “gets it” to make the sort of screw-ups that these journalists are loving to highlight.
Many old dogs don’t want to learn new tricks – on both sides of the PR/Journalist equation. So, their usage of the new tools is going to be a bit bumpy.