PR Online Social Networking
Public Relations Professionals Find Internet Socializing Effective
Sep 27, 2008
What do virtual worlds, Twitter, LinkedIn, chat rooms, Plaxo, flicker, and diggit along with all of the other online social networks have to do with a company’s public relations efforts?
For now – plenty. For the future – more than plenty. Public relations professionals can use all or some of these networks to expand news coverage of a company or organization, network with other public relations professionals and keep up-to-date with the news from other companies with national, state and local news.
Online Social Networking Expands News Coverage
Part of the job for public relations professionals is to continually look for ways to expand news coverage of the company they represent. It’s old news that traditional news resources such as local and regional print newspapers, local and regional television and radio have been printing and broadcasting less news.
The new news is that there are still plenty of news resources to go around. Most of which on are on the Internet - many of which do not look like the traditional news formats. Social networks, virtual worlds, blogs, chat rooms, and text messaging and everything in between have greater reaches than conventional news resources and have a more instant persona.
The reach of online news varies from the general audience (across all generational lines) to the CEO of international companies. Just like determining the best newspapers or trade magazines to approach with company news, the best online resources have to be evaluated before selecting. Keep in mind the search engines can pickup any news posted to the Internet regardless of the online network used.
A good site to start with is prnewswire.com. One of the best online press release distribution channels these days is prweb.com and is another good starting point.
Online Networking with Public Relations Professionals World Wide with LinkedIn and Plaxo
Virtual worlds and social networks such as LinkedIn and Plaxo opens the doors for connecting with public relations people from all walks of business, non-profit, entertainment and political platforms from any and all countries around the world.
Blogging is the new back door to media interviews. Reporters monitor blogs for breaking stories and events to expand into print or television which makes this media a good source to get contacted for an interview.
Who are the bloggers or blog readers? According to technorati.com, 50 percent of bloggers are between the ages of 18 to 34, two-thirds are male and 70 percent have college degrees. Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that 27 percent of Internet users read blogs.
Keeping Current with News Events
Ways to use the online social networks are endless. According to the August 18, 2008 issue of Fortune magazine, Twitter which is a micro-blogging site that is one step above text messaging but not quite as time consumer as blogging had close to three million users in June of 2008.
Twitter users include individuals, companies, newspapers and political hopefuls such as Barack Obama. The Obama campaign has used Twitter a number of times to communicate and update followers while on the campaign trail.
Want to get news from major corporations first hand? Read their blog. Look at all of the blog offerings at thenewpr.com/wiki or at prnewswire.com.
Online Socially Acceptable Networking
Online social networking can be highly time consumer. Nonetheless, using the Internet to do professional networking is becoming the standard and for the immediate future a must do activity for public relations.
 |
