I agree with the argument presented in this article on PR professionals underutilizing social media. As a former journalist who recently made the transition to communications and PR, I can attest to the lack of social media in PR practice.
At the CBC, where I worked in TV news for 10 years, we began using Twitter during the 2008 federal election. We used it to follow candidates and gauge the reaction of voters. Soon after, most of our reporters began tweeting and urged viewers to follow them on Twitter.
Twitter also quickly became a tool for us to find out what was going on in parts of the world where we had little access, like the mass demonstrations in Iran. Facebook also became the quickest and easiest way to find out information about people, particularly students, who were in the news. And for better or for worse, YouTube videos frequently made an appearance on our shows to showcase either rare footage or funny stories.
Now I've switched sides and the difference is palpable. It could be that I'm at a large corporation and it's simply slow to change, but all of our internal means of communications follow the tradition routes of emails, phone calls, posters or printed literature. I'm shocked at how few co-workers are even tuned in to LinkedIn. Could it be that too many people still view social media as a young person's tool and therefore don't take it seriously? There seems to also be a real fear of sensitive company information leaking out on blogs or Facebook. My goal is to help change that perception, but I anticipate it will be a tough, uphill battle. I'm curious to know what others think is the best way to foster this change.
I think the real issue is the lack of committment from the "decision makers" in the organization. Without their "buy-in," there's very little that can be done by the PR professionals. We struggle with this at my company too because many of the senior officials don't understand social media, or worse, don't see its potential. So, we continue following traditional methods of media communications, but I've warned that social media isn't a fad and whether they like it or not, they need to start participating in the process now. Baby steps, and I mean baby steps, are being taken, but I really believe there needs to be a shift in how the company sees our relationship with our stakeholder's grow in the future.
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