The New PR Professional

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on June 09th, 2010

I came across a blog post by Deirdre Breakenridge that talked about “The Hybrid Professional.”  It’s worth a read.

Our role has changed. It’s as simple as that. As professional communicators, it is crucial that we understand social media and that we blend it into our overall communications strategy, when appropriate. I am still surprised at how many people in PR still have their head stuck in the sand about social media.

I was recently at a brainstorming meeting with a client. Our client had an industry partner at the session and they had their PR agency team with them, from a well-respected, large PR firm. A question came up about social media – it wasn’t a big question. In fact, in our frame of reference, it was a pretty basic question.  The lead PR person from the other agency stopped the discussion and said: “I need to bring my social media specialist in on this.”  I was surprised. We weren’t defining a strategy or developing a specific campaign where you might want someone who specializes in social media in on the planning, we were having a PR discussion that touched on social media at its basic level.

Her next sentence almost had me falling off my chair, “I don’t know anything about social media.” Wow. We wouldn’t think about hiring someone for the AHA team who didn’t have at least the basics.

Whether an organization is actively involved and participating in social media depends on the organization and their communications objectives. But they definitely need to be monitoring what is being said. In my opinion, it’s crucial that the PR lead and the team working with an organization be fluent in the language and culture of social media.