Brand Central Station

(Editor’s Note: This is one of my favorite blog posts – not just for the comments it generated but for the way it addressed a re-occuring theme: that, somehow, PR is dead and Social Media killed it.  C’mon people.  Get over it.)

I’m going to try and infuse something that’s been missing from this whole “Social Media is killing PR” meme that seems to be sweeping through the Blogosphere/Twitterverse lately. 

A little common sense.

This maelstrom has been whipped up, primarily, by PR’s and journalists/bloggers working in the technology space.  And the echo is practically deafening.

While there have been plenty of valid points raised about the nature of public relations, the profession’s current and future place in the enterprise, the role of blogging and other Web 2.0 apps in brand building, sales and CRM – I’ve come to one major conclusion:

Social media “experts” need to get over themselves and PR people need to stop looking over their shoulder to see who’s trying to do them in.

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In every social order there are those at the top and then there are the rest of us a few rungs down the ladder (some a few more rungs than others).  That’s even true in the Twitterverse where there are some folks who are bound to attract more “followers” than others.

Hey, movie stars Tweet, recording artists Tweet, politicos Tweet, journos Tweet.  In a land where no one can utter more than 140-letter tomes at a time, it’s amazing who you can find, follow and friend.

But just who should you really be following?  In a service with over 2 million subscribers (some claim there are more than 3 million), it’s tough to know which conversations are worth dropping in on. 

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A young Peter Arnett when he was a field reporter for the AP in Vietnam

Richard Edelman writes about his recent conversation with Mike Oreskes, the US editor for the Associated Press.  While PR gurus like Steve Rubel write about the end of media as we know it (especially print), Oreskes and the folks at the AP are finding ways to add value to their service and make the digital transformation that will be required of all media at some point or another.

Most interesting part of the entire conversation bewteen the two though (at least to me), was the insight that the AP has more than 800 reporters and editors in the US alone – there to fill in where local media is cutting back.  Oreskes refers to a need for “hyper-local” coverage as part of the reason why the AP is working to establish a national footprint beyond New York and Washington, DC.

Richard has asked us to provide our experiences with AP reporters – if you have one, do him the favor of replying (the “online conversations” Richard has with readers of his blog are sometimes more interesting than the original posts, themselves).  View the blog post here.

Micropersuasion’s Steve Rubel shares a list of the things every company should be monitoring online:

- Your company name
- Your company URL
- Your company’s public-facing figures
- Your product names
- Your product URL’s
- Your industry hang-outs
- Your employee’s blogs
- Online conversations about your brand/company
- Your brand’s image
- Your competition

Thanks to Steve for tipping us off to Cameron Olthuis’ blog post on this subject. Cameron provides a list of web sites and tools that you can use to “track your buzz.”

Sounds like a full-time job, doesn’t it? I know a firm that would be happy to help.