I believe PR is stuck in the land of media relations. In other words, getting a hit for a client is the only thing PR can do. PR means so much more. It is experiental, grassroots, media relations, crisis communications and most importantly, it does own a space in the social media arena.

Public Relations is all about conversations and what better place to converse then in a social media setting or on a blog. Building relationships does take time. I am working on a business model to illustrate this process and how we can “shorten” the cycle without losing any of the necessary steps or beneftis that building relationships can reap.

In today’s world of instant access to information, the relationship-building process doesn’t have to take as long as it used to.

Posted by: Leslie Hawk | January 14, 2009 10:58 AM”

That’s brilliant, Ms. Hawk! Can you hear me clapping? Nice way to pull PR jargon out of your backside. Coming from someone with NO FORMAL EDUCATION OR TRAINING IN THE FIELD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS! I happen to work as a PR professional at an agency in Louisville, KY, and if memory serves me right, you don’t exactly work as a PR Strategist as your “blog” purports. A great friend of mine, who actually RAN that agency for a while, was telling me a story about how incredibly inept you were in your job — so much so they held back on giving you assignments and instead “let” you focus more on advertising objectives. If you are, in fact, that Leslie Hawk, I don’t know what goods you’re trying to sell or what persona you’re trying to market, but we ain’t buying. It might do you some good to get a real education in PR before you embarrass yourself any further. I mean really … what kind of “PR Strategist” can’t even secure one blog follower. That should tell you how desired your professional opionion is amongst your peers. Just sayin’.

BTW, great insight Todd!

The problem with most webinars is that while the core content is valuable, it is almost always the information everyone already knows – because the new information is what the speaker wants you to hire them for. Indeed, if people want to know what the secret sauce of social media really is, they’ll probably have to pay for it.

As to why PR people get social wrong, my guess is that their thinking simply hasn’t shifted from thinking about one-way communication to a dialog. At its heart, dialog is what social media is all about. Like any real conversation. If you tried talking to someone who was obviously not listening to you, you’d walk away from them too.

I think that there’s a real learning curve to social media that a lot of traditional PR people don’t necessarily grasp.

Leslie raised a great point with PR people being stuck in a “media” environment. Since blogs are becoming another source of coverage, I think a lot of practitioners don’t take into consideration that these individuals don’t have editorial staffs and editorial calendars. People don’t like being traditionally pitched to, no one reads press releases for fun. You have to converse with people and show them the value of your message. Unfortunately a lot of “malpractice” could create a backlash against practitioners when relations between “Pr people” and journalists are progressing rather well.

I’m w/ @tdefren: glad social media 101 Pr training is widespread, impatient that some ppl r still struggling w/ the basics [link to post]

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What he found was an almost evangelical approach from PR people wanting to do the right thing on social media and not allow the poor practices of the past to leak into the present. What was even more interesting was the relaxed attitude among some journalists about interacting with PR consultants through social media.

Where’s the Disconnect? [link to post] So true, So true .

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