PR's effect on the social media world

I found an interesting post from Steven Silvers on whether or not PR professionals are ruining social media. While I do think there is a LOT that is being done poorly by some of us, (Wal-Mart, Sony, etc.) I don't actually believe this is the case. Frankly, the social media community is far too strong to allow it. Whenever some new social media program gets used for - let's call it what it is - spam, the site in question invariably fights back. Wikipedia and del.icio.us place "nofollow" tags on their pages, blogs make it impossible to leave URLs in comments. This is to say nothing of the actual users of the site, who know when they're being pitched to. Going on Yahoo! Answers and giving ad copy on everything even remotely related to the question never gets picked as, "best answer." Also, as an avid user of Second Life myself, I've yet to decide to buy an MP3 player or soda because I saw it there. (Everyone there is playing you their music for free, and Eric Sternberg has yet to get parched while flying over Taber.)

Of course, that only speaks to the sites' and users' ability to defend themselves. The other side of the coin is far less forgiving, and makes me tempted to agree with the original premise: Many people in my line of work have made a hash of social media. I can't claim to be entirely blameless, either. In early attempts to get the word out about a client, I would experiment to see what was and wasn't possible, and as with most any early attempt, failed. That is what I believe is going on here, however. PR and marketing professionals are coming to social media later than everyone else who is adopting it because it is fun. As such, many do not have the savvy to write a blog or Digg a story without potentially looking like fools. My hope is that eventually we will all come to understand what is and isn't possible with this "new" tool. I say "new" because, frankly, it isn't. Web 2.0 has been around since Web 1.0, in the form of chat rooms, Geocities pages, discussion forums, etc. Those early social sites were plagued with the same level of bad promotion. As a result, moderators found applications to keep the spammers out, chat rooms installed, "ignore user" buttons, and clunky Geocities pages simply never got visited. Marketers eventually learned that they could be obnoxious online until the cows came home, but it would not get them closer to their ultimate objective of promoting their client. You can see this starting to happen now, with advocates taking part in an intelligent and useful manner. Again, I speak from experience. Simply trolling for cheap opportunities never resulted in any significant increase in clicks, sales or even back links. Honestly and uncynically involving myself in the conversation at hand, however, has allowed me to build trust and honestly communicate what is good and useful about what my client has to offer. It is no different than the average user suggesting a product to another because they felt the discussion warranted it. I have to believe that ultimately these other PR professionals who are right now giving themselves a bad name will eventually come to the same conclusion. Because no matter what you're promoting, no one is ever going to trust a shill, and all of us are (hopefully) smart enough to realize that.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)