The first meeting of the CIPR’s social media panel took place last week. There’s an announcement about the panel, its make-up and its remit on the CIPR web site. I was pleased to accept an invitation to join the group.
You can follow the work of the panel on Twitter via the hashtag #ciprsm – and @ciprsocialmediapanel is a Twitter account that is following the members of the panel and aggregating their Twitter feeds.
I let my membership of the CIPR lapse five years ago after former director general Colin Farringdon dismissed the potential of blogs and social media. But its all change. The winds of modernisation are whistling through the institute under the leadership of president Jay O’Connor. And that can only be a good thing.
I renewed my membership when O’Connor’s appointment was announced. If you’re a lapsed member I’d urge you to take another look at CIPR.
Modernisation of the institute is long overdue and its going to take longer than O’Connor’s one-year term as president. But initiatives such as the social media panel and the strategic review that O’Connor has put in place are a great start.
There’s a new web site in development and the CIPR has begun to return to a campaigning agenda on issues such as PR spam and lobbying.
Its a great start.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7c10e83b-ba2a-4797-982b-dba255733ebf)
Hurrah for Jay. A huge step in the right direction.
Yeah, I remember being told that all things digital social media were nothing but a flash in the pan and would remain a nothing but a peripheral element of PR a few years ago, not by the former CIPR DG but by some other senior PR practitioners who should have known better…..
Good to see that the CIPR is finally listening and taking positive action by working with some of its members who genuinely know their stuff. Looking forward to your collective thoughts.
I chaired the CIPR’s Digital Focus conference last year and, with an agenda that included several speakers discussing social media, online PR and its’ impact on business, there was a clear recognition and desire by the CIPR to do more with social media. The development of the panel and the upcoming Digital Impact Conference should really help to reinforce their relevance and commitment to members in this area, and hopefully be a long-term contributor to developing education and standards amongst PR professionals.
I think that this is long overdue. There is a misconception that PRs do not understand social media in the digital world and I think that it is fair to say that we have been very slow to pick this up.
As a result I have found that the majority of my work over a year ago had come via designers, marketing agencies, digital agencies and even IT companies, but seldom did clients approach PR companies for SEO or social media advice. As a result we repositioned away from a PR core focus and specialised in online PR, SEO and social media.
I think that CIPR should work very hard at turning this misconception around to the fact that PRs are great content producers (big tick for SEO and traffic), natural networkers (big tick for engaging communities online) and are extremely experienced in reputation management and stakeholder communications (where digital agencies in the whole are rubbish – Ref Nestle, Dominos Pizza etc).
I would also be interested to know what the CIPR are doing in the regions outside London as the misconceptions of old are even stronger there.