SOCIAL MEDIA IS HERE TO STAY

News flash: communications will never be the same. The social media revolution has altered the landscape of public relations. It is not apparent to most practitioners yet but it has happened. My students at Humber College know it and they are eager to embrace it if someone could just explain it to them. It is more than Facebook, MySpace,YouTube and Linked in. It is a way of thinking that changes the entire model of communications as it’s been practiced perhaps since Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays launched public relations as a means of communications during and after World War I.

The previous top down model is best described in the hit TV series Mad Men, which if you have not seen it, you owe it to yourself to tune in. It’s all about the sexist, racist, tobacco-addicted advertising world of the early 60s. At the time, television, with its famed three networks, served a connected, unified hypermarket. You could really sell a mass product like cigarettes to a mass audience.

Today, you can sell to a mass audience but you must effect a communications plan that is collaborative,inclusive and quasi-democratic. It invites audience participation and the influence of the audience. There is even a new template for the Social Media News Release, which describes all the ways that multi-media, RSS feeds, video and blogs become part of the new equation.

For additional information about the Social Media News Release is all about, visit these URLS.

Social Media News Release Template:

http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf

Monologue has given way to dialogue:

http://www.briansolis.com/2007/06/future-of-communications-manifesto-for.html

Brian Solis of San Francisco has emerged as one of the leading thinkers in the social media landscape.

Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php

The first manifesto in the war against top-down communications.

We will return to this topic frequently.

Tags: News Releases, Public Relations, social media