Social f&cking media eh?

If you’re a PR, it’s everywhere. All the time. Dozens of tatty bits of spam each day. Hundreds of tweets from inane PR types about the fact that they’re buying a coffee, how ‘busy’ they are, some apparently fascinating new fact (normally days after the event) or their latest Lambrini escapade. Loads of sage-like wisdom from the social media powerlords about the future, the larger social implications and the sheer exuberance that stemmed from what several dozen people had to say about a topic that’s actually very on the grey side.

If a lot of the Twitter conversations I’ve seen recently are comparable to conversations in a pub, it’s time to sup up and sod off home.

But enough of this pessimism and wholly unfair fingerpointing. The point of this post is an appeal for all PRs to get real and move on on the subject of social media influence. Of course social media has growing influence. It’s sort of obvious that if people suddenly have the ability to talk to individuals, politicians and brands all over the world, that two-way communication is becoming inevitable and that the transparency has hitherto unforeseen power, it will have influence. Yes social media has influence. Yes it is measurable in some way, because it is digitised so has an audit trail.

Yet those PRs who bleat on about how fascinating it is that influence can be measured, that ratings and supposed positivity around a brand or a person can be extracted in graph form, are spending too much time wallowing in the same wafting smells and not enough considering the bigger picture. Which is that media is changing, outcomes can be better measured but we are not there yet in making PR a fully measurable cost centre. Not by a long way.

Equally, the social media experts (they call themselves that, so clearly it must be so, given the scope of their social media influence of course) who run down other forms of media are short-sighted. Media is changing. The rules are changing. Influence is changing. We don’t know what it will look like in future, but saying something like the internet is now all-powerful and telly is less so is missing the point by a country mile.

The way I see it is this: some clever people are putting time and thought into making PR more measurable and making sense of media/technological change, and they will get their rewards I hope. Meanwhile, a lot of (by comparison) very workshy or blindly-led people are banging on about things like social media influence as if it’s the be-all and end-all of modern, better justifiable PR. My guess is they’re doing it because they’re late to the party and reckon it’ll get them sales/prevent them from looking like dinosaurs. And all they’re doing is confusing matters and making the industry look a bit fickle.

I’ve deliberately left lots of links out of this post. I could attribute much of this venting to individuals and their published content, but that’d be a cheap shot, even for me.

So instead, consider some of the emails and tweets I’ve seen in recent days from agencies and individuals offering ‘social media services’, advice and trumpeting interesting social media things:
- Five ways to get started with a social media strategy
- The power of Twitter influence
- Social media engagement and why communities work
- Building social media into your engagement framework
- Social media is good for you (because it’s so social)

FFS.

It’s the equivalent of old school PRs 20 years ago braying about why newspapers are widely read by people, why being on the front page means your story is prominent or why television can be influential given it can attract a captive audience of couch potatoes.

Social media is one of the most important developments in media ever, because it is direct to readers, is two-way and leaves an audit trail. Fact. Get over it. Get on with it. And while you’re at it, figure out how editorial influence and search marketing join up too please.

And for the love of Jesus, will someone please send me a message about how to make PR properly measurable in a very straightforward way; so that for once, finally, after years of struggle, I can clinically prove the value of what I do for a living?