PR Blog Jots - Social PR Sampler

Twitter PR
Tech PR Gems
In response to Jim Horton’s latest white paper on the use of microblogging platforms like Twitter in a PR capacity, Doug Haslam lists his own conclusions on Twitter’s PR capacity. Doug agrees with Jim that Twitter’s character limit on “tweets” forces users to break down their thoughts into easily digestible morsels, and agrees that PR practitioners should experiment with Twitter. He thinks, however, that Jim ought to expand his viewpoint for the PR use beyond simple internal communications. “I use Twitter, aside from conversation with friends and colleagues, to bring quick attention to developments by clients, blog posts, and news. I try to keep it appropriate to daily discussion, and disclose if I am talking about a client-- confident, of course, that the message is of interest when I do so. I'll be doing more experimentation, and I hope Jim Horton does as well. I didn't see a Twitter ID in his paper-- Jim, what are you doing?”

Facebook PR
PR Squared
Todd Defren discusses the merging world of personal and professional lives among popular social networks, such as Facebook. He cites a blog post he wrote encouraging the use of Facebook for PR pros to build media contacts, and pitch in public—and the accompanying reluctance to do just that among his staff. Todd points out that many PR pros may not want to give reporters access to their personal networks (and the “dubious” content therein), and suggests allowing the media only limited access to profiles. His company plans to start a Facebook group to interact with media professionals. “Eventually we’ll invite any media contacts who are on Facebook (and with whom we have a pre-existing relationship!) to join the SHIFTers group, if they care to use this channel to reach out to our agency all-at-once.  For example, a reporter who joined the SHIFTers Group could post, “I’m on deadline for a story about XYZ – you guys got any XYZ experts over there?” either via a post on the SHIFTers Group wall or via an email to the entire group.”

Second Life PR
Paul Gillin
Linking to a Wired article that dismisses Second Life as little more than a useless marketing platform for Madison Avenue, Paul Gillin wonders about the future of conducting business in a virtual reality medium. He underlines some of the articles more egregious statistics, notably that 85% of people who create avatars eventually abandon them, and that marketers are spending millions on building virtual worlds in Second Life, despite their lack of online visitors. “A particularly interesting comment is at the top of the third page of this profile. It proposes that one of the reasons for Second Life's popularity is that it looks so much like the physical world. This gives marketers a sense of comfort that they don't have when experimenting with the more effective but less familiar tactics that really do work online. In other words, if we can just recreate familiar surroundings, we’ll be okay.”