Social Media Provides Opportunity for New Communication With Your Public

Social media applications are a thriving part of our culture. One has only to reflect on the millions and millions of blogs that have been created to get a glimpse at the potential power that lies within.

Social Media is All About Communication and Dialogue

The motivations to participate in this new media are varied - bloggers are clearly making an effort to share intelligence; other applications share information (Wikipedia); news (Digg), photos (Flickr), games (Miniclip), foster community through social networking (MySpace), or create a virtual reality (Second Life). Regardless of the motive, each platform has an important common component - interactivity that fosters dialogue and offers significant communication opportunities.

Once You Learn the Basics, You'll Feel A Lot More Comfortable

Applications such as these make use of social media technologies that are commonly referenced in daily communication. Many professionals are heavily involved in these technologies and have known the basics (and much more) for years. Based on the popularity of seminars that are now being offered on the topic of social media, there are many PR pros who think they are behind the learning curve, and feel a need to start with the basics.

A Social Media Primer

Internet forums are sites that are created for the purpose of holding discussions and sharing information between people with similar interests. Other common names for this type of site are message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards.

A podcast is a digital media file or series of files that are created for distribution over the Internet and are played back on portable media players (such as iPods) and personal computers. This media format can be automatically downloaded using software that reads feed formats (such as RSS).

A wiki is a Web site that encourages mass collaborative authoring by enabling visitors to add, remove or change content typically without requiring even so much as a registration.

Tagging is a way to classify and bookmark Web content. Several new services, such as http://del.icio.us/, allow you to share your bookmarks with others and together build a storehouse of knowledge about a particular subject.

RSS feeds are a method of distributing links to Web content. Anyone can sign up to receive RSS feeds. To view the feed, you'll need a free RSS reader. (http://allrss.com/rssreaders.html).

Building Good Blogger Relations Takes Effort, but it's Essential

If you are just beginning to tap into social media, invest some time in exploring and reading the blogs that are directed at the audience you wish to reach. You may even consider joining in the conversation by adding your comments to a blogger's post or e-mailing the writer with information that is relevant to a recent post.

Once you have an understanding of the blogger's interests and style, you are ready to begin sharing your news. Hyperlinks will enhance any press release. Whenever possible, include links to related support material, reference sources, graphics, video, your Web site and online press room. Digital tags and RSS feed links will improve the reach of your release as well. If you are a subscriber to the BurrellesLuce MediaContacts database then you have access to virtual press kits, which will enable you to easily incorporate these features in every release you send.

What Starts as Social Media Often Ends up in the Press

This may be good or bad for the organization you represent, depending upon the story being reported. One thing is certain - you'll want to know about it. Some professionals rely on free search engines and RSS feeds to get their news. BurrellesLuce cautions against this for several indisputable reasons:

• Free search engines don't dig deep enough and you're bound to miss essential coverage. Much of the content found on the Web is not accessible without a registration or subscription.


• Search terms need strong parameters to avoid a flood of useless information. Unless you have an endless amount of time to sift through the hits, you may not ever see the news you want to see, because it will be mixed in with all the other "stuff" that happens to hold your search terms.


• Syndicated material will eat you alive. When you are short on time (and who isn't?) you can't afford to be wasting it deleting the syndicated story that has hit every Web site in creation.

Now that blogs and Web-only news sources are truly a part of the media landscape, they must be included in your monitoring efforts. BurrellesLuce begins with a wide media universe (Click here to see our source list numbers), selectively limits that universe based upon each client's information needs and provides customized Web-based analytics or analysis service from our team of experts. A comprehensive analysis of all your media (social, electronic, print, and broadcast) is what you need in order to understand the success of your overall media outreach efforts and plan for the future.

Whether you need to contact the social media, monitor the sites, or measure the effectiveness of your efforts, BurrellesLuce can help. Our MediaContacts database subscribers have access to virtual press kits. The sources we monitor include over 50 million blogs, Web forums and Web-only news sources (along with all of the traditional media outlets). And our measurement services are designed to analyze it all based upon each client's strategic needs.