Once again, trying to find something of interest to write about that wasn't completely over discussed I stumbled upon the blog of a CEO (which just so happens to be the topic of last class!) Ronn Torossian is the CEO of a PR firm in NYC, 5W Public Relations.
In his recent post, Social Media & PR, Torossian talks about a discussion had with staff about the uses of social media. He points out that several people use Facebook as a means of creating a relationship with reporters. Through this relationship, they are then able to tailor pitches in a way that appeals to the reporter and therefor the story has a better chance of being picked up.
A commenter furthered Torossian's point saying he used Facebook to better understand a reporters interests and then moves from there.
It got me thinking... what ways have I (and others) used Facebook?
A few semesters back I took a marketing class in which the entire semester was spent writing a 40+ page paper. Now, if that wasn't bad enough, it was a group project. Even worse, the groups had to be at least 5-7 members. How a teacher expected five people to be able to work together all semester and calabratively write an (awesome) paper is beyond me. Unfortunately, I had no choice.
I had one friend in the class and we had a weekend to decide who to have in our groups. No one in the class really seemed up for the whole talk and get to know each other scenario so Gabe and I got smart about it... we got onto Blackboard, pulled up the class roster, and started Facebook stalking people in the class.
The next class period Gabe and I felt we'd found three students that seemed hard working, responsible, and shared similar characteristics. We approached them, asked if they wanted to be in our group and no one hesitated! Twelve weeks later we completed the paper and only had one disagreement throughout the process. To this day the teacher can't believe we were able to work that well together.
Call it chance if you will, but I fully believe it was using Facebook to scope out prospect that made the project so successful. If it worked that well for me, I can only imagine how well it works for PR professionals trying to establish credibility and relationships with journalists.
Has anyone else had similar experiences?
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1 comment:
The reality is that it does not matter if PR, advertising and social media are all marketing communications .Social media is by definition slow. Done correctly, social media is about developing meaningful relationships with customers and prospective customers in their natural habitat.
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Nickysam
social media marketing
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