Morphing With The Social Media Landscape

One of the things that makes our jobs as PR pros enjoyable, interesting and occasionally daunting is that we work in an industry that is morphing with the social media landscape.

While those working in other fields, like law and medicine, may use Facebook or Twitter to share some of their news or experiences, we use these avenues to serve our clients on a day-to-day basis. And these two social media 'cool kids' aren't enough.

We must also know about Foursquare, Pitch Engine, HootSuite, Argyle Social and Muck Rack. And don't forget about TLists.

These are some of the top tools at the moment, but what's to say that they won't be replaced by something else more innovative and efficient in the next couple of months?

We certainly won't use every social media tool for our clients (we don't have enough time in the day for that), but we should know them by name and constantly assess whether they could be of some benefit to our client base.

So what does this mean for us? It means that we must be in learning mode at all times. We can't simply attend one annual professional development workshop a year and think that we're set to succeed.

It's best to sign up for webinars, routinely read a variety of PR blogs and not be afraid to ask co-workers about the new tools at our fingertips.

Just this week, our team sat down and reviewed a HubSpot Ebook about leveraging social media for PR success. We found some strategies that we'd immediately integrate into our work and found others that we've agreed to research and discuss in the future.

As PR pros, we not only have a responsibility to plan and execute publicity strategies for our clients, but also to stay up on the latest trends and tools, both for our clients and ourselves.

If you're holding tight to conventional PR practices and unwilling to play around with a few new ones, this could be an unsettling and unsuccessful time. But if you're willing to step out, take a ride around the new social media landscape and pick out a few “flowers” of your own, it can be fun and quite rewarding.

It's up to you.