From time to time I come across some really good stuff by other professionals in our industry. This piece from Ryan Greives, a Media Relations Specialist at BLASTmedia is apropos. How social media is changing organizational structures is important for both corporate and agency PR. Here's Ryan in his own words.
I recently used Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out™
(HARO) as a journalist, rather than a PR practitioner, looking to gain
insight on a particular topic from the thousands of PR people who
receive the daily queries. It was quite an exciting experience, I must
say. Submitting a query for what I was looking for, awaiting the
delivery of the HARO query list that hits my email box three times a
day, and then reading through all of the interesting emails from
possible sources. It was like writing a pen pal and awaiting their
reply…but with many more return letters. Do kids even do that anymore,
with Facebook now in their lives? I’m guessing not. But I digress.
My HARO was simple (or so I thought):
I am looking into how social media is changing the PR agency organizational structure.
- Has it changed the role of traditional PR specialists? Are
agencies incorporating it into their daily account work, hiring a
social media specialist in-house, or outsourcing it?
- Have new positions been created in PR agencies?
- How are social media experts integrating into current organizational structures?
I’d appreciate any feedback or input from PR practitioners (preferably execs).
The responses came flooding in with some surprising feedback. First
off, I was surprised at how off-topic half of the pitches were,
especially from “PR execs” at some well-known agencies. These are the
“experts” that are working on the $10-$50K a month accounts of some the
world’s biggest brands? Yikes! It made me truly appreciate the teaching
and training we do here at BLASTmedia on how to pitch on-target,
with a story angle, necessary details and contact info. Some “experts”
didn’t even include any information or reason for me to consider them
whatsoever – basically saying, “I’d be perfect for your story. Call
me.” Really? I have no idea how you never get your clients media
attention with that type of pitching.
However, the responses were not all bad – which is what lead me to
the second surprise and the point of this post. What I was looking for
was how social media is changing PR agencies in their organization
charts. Were all PR representatives being trained on social media or
were outside social media “gurus”
being hired to handle everything? If they were being hired or
outsourced, to whom were they reporting? This is the essence of what I
was looking for, which some realized. Here are a couple responses.
Our agency recently formed a new group to meet this need – the Public Relations and Social Media Group. ~ Chris Henneghan, Schubert Communications
While some agencies are creating positions and titles such as
social media specialists, we are taking a different approach. I am
encouraging my team to integrate social media into their day-to-day
operations. We use it to share information about what we are doing as
an agency as well as to communicate with
reporters/bloggers/influencers. Social media is also used to source
articles and research the key influencers in a specific market,
technology, topic, etc. Like the telephone, fax, email, instant
messages, etc., social media is yet another tool that must be embraced
by PR and marketing professionals. ~ Domenick Cilea, Springboard Public Relations
And, my favorite…
Our agency has not hired any new employees to handle social
media; instead we’ve required everyone from myself down to the
receptionist/executive assistant to attend online seminars, read some
great books like “Groundswell,” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from
Forrester Research, and I have gone to New York to attend a number of
social media multi-day seminars.
Were I to go out today and hire a new publicist, social media
experience would absolutely be a prerequisite to even interviewing with
us. The learning curve is steep, as we’ve found out, and since the last
four of our newest clients were hired based on a proposal heavy in
social media, I don’t see this reverting back. ~ Shamin Abas, Shamin Abas Public Relations
What I realized is that agencies are all doing different things to
integrate social media into their old organizational model – there was
no “cookie-cutter” answer for social media. PR agencies are looking
around to see how they can use social media to add value to their
current offerings, if this needs to be a separate division in their
company or if all of their PR reps should be learning and using social
media themselves. At BLAST,
we have received numerous requests and questions regarding social media
from current and prospective clients, some wanting purely social media
campaigns. It’s great to know that we have social media in our arsenal
and can show clients a true ROI. However, it will be interesting to see
how not only social media will change the media landscape, but also the
entire PR industry and agency organization structure. What are your
thoughts?
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