That’s the name of Brian Solis’s new book. Reviews are great and you can order if off Amazon.
There have been a lot of posts lately from the likes of Todd Defren and others lamenting traditional PR agencies lack of understanding, and unwillingless to learn about – social media and online PR.
All the posts and articles share a common recommendation. The first thing to check for when searching for an agency that can help you with your social media objectives – is their social presence. Are they leveraging off any social networking sites? do any of them blog? do they use online press releases? do they view bloggers as potential key influencers? can they show you evidence of successfully developing and implementing their own social media strategy, and can they show you some they’ve delivered for clients?
Don’t let them try and fool you that their ‘interactive’ or ‘digital media’ work (while it may be impressive and creative) is social.
To be social there needs to be an ‘exchange’ .
Talk, listen, engage.
I think that the “engage” part is the most threatening to traditional PR folks. You can’t control those open conversations, and I agree with Brian that transparency is pretty scary to some people. And not just agencies – many clients don’t like it either. Imaging if you could see what people really thought of them!
You’re right to highlight the recommendations about agencies’ social presence. I suspect that if you excluded the ones that don’t have any, there would be very few left standing, particularly in a small market like NZ. It feels like the early days of the web – lots of rubbish and only a few people who really get it.
Social media has incredible potential to shake up traditional PR – it’s about time, I reckon.