Blog

By Greg Canty of Fuzion PR

Parallel Media

Parallel Media is a phrase we use with our clients: We need to stop viewing social media in a separate way - it operates best in parallel with traditional media and often compliments it quite well in campaigns.

When you see TV chat shows pushing out a hashtag during discussions encouraging the viewers at home to join in and help carry the conversations and topics you know it's parallel media.

When Stephanie Meehan is interviewed on the Late Late Show about Priory Hall and she is not permitted to name the bank who pressurised her and her family and at the same time the offending banks name is "on fire" on twitter ...that's parallel media!

The Gatekeeper

With any PR campaign you will end up pitching your idea or news item to journalists, editors, radio or TV researchers and producers. Everywhere you turn you have a "gatekeeper" to deal with and if your item is of sufficient interest and novel enough then it will fly and will be put before the audience of that publication or show.

When you have carefully developed your own social media channels you are not totally dependent on these gatekeepers to push out your message.

The Accelerator and Branded Chit Chat

By using social media in a clever way you can accelerate all of your other efforts.

Traditional media as we currently know it (some day social media will fall into this category!) is great for carrying those big messages and news items to a wide audience but what about those smaller news items that would never be worthy of a press release?

Social media kicks in for all of those smaller pieces of news, which are often of huge interest to your target audience but may not be of interest to a wider more general audience.

The other way the informal world of social media works well for your reputation is for much softer reasons around your personality, attitude, philosophy and business culture. I always say to my clients that they can often achieve a lot for their own reputation by talking about things other than themselves on these platforms where you can be less formal....think about it!

By posting and interacting with a well chosen audience on Facebook or Twitter or even with individuals on LinkedIn you are generating awareness for you and your business - I use the phrase "branded chit chat".

Fishing

When you go fishing it's probably best to go to a place that has plenty of fish!

Twitter in particular is now being extensively used by the media and if you are clever you will follow, listen and interact with those journalists that are relevant to your business. This is often where they fish for their leads and information and it's where you can fish for their attention. Start fishing ..

Who's saying what?

I tell my clients who are nervous about social media to open up twitter accounts and even if they never want to post anything (believe me, I will give them 100% encouragement to make some noise) they should follow relevant accounts and use the powerful search functionality to track mentions of their business, competitors and relevant topics - it's an incredible way of finding our what's being said out there.

When the wheels fall off...

Often we are called by a client when the "wheels have fallen off" - when there is some crisis, which requires delicate handling with the media. We have been in this situation with clients over accidents, deaths, embarrassing incidents, blips and blunders!!

Social media with the right searches is brilliant for discovering the pulse of a situation, it captures conversations, comments and will provide a good temperature check on an issue, which can be invaluable when it comes to your media relations.

If the business has built up a loyal following on-line you will find they will support you in your time of need, which is there for all to see.

Dilution

While there are new media channels adding extra ways of reaching our audience the ability of that audience to soak up more information is limited to their attention span and the number of hours they have in a day.

The new channels offer new opportunities to communicate but they add even more complexity to the job of pushing out a message. Because our attention spans are so diluted we need to be active on as many channels as possible with each accelerating the job the other channel is doing and unfortunately we cannot rely on any exclusively.

When you ask the question "how did you hear about this?" and you get the answer "I'm not sure" then, you are probably doing something right!

Social Media and PR?
Is the role of social media increasing in PR?  ...you tell me

 

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion
Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin