Not surprisingly, public relations (“PR”) is undergoing revolutionary change right along with journalism. I just attended a Seattle Lunch 2.0 presentation based on the premise that social media is now the primary vehicle for PR.
Panelist John Cook is a journalist-cum-blogger, a former Seattle Post Intelligencer beat reporter and blogger for venture capital, now co-founder and executive editor of TechFlash. He made two particularly interesting points:
1) In response to an audience member who expressed the widely held view that press releases are mostly useful for SEO purposes nowadays, he said he still WANTs to receive press releases, they help him assess potential stories.
2) His “sources” for investigative journalism stories he’s covering now include people who read about his investigation online and give him tips via posts (comments on his blog, Tweets, and emails I assume) in real time.
Jaime Riley from Deloitte said that since it’s inevitable that the “Gen Y” future leaders of Deloitte will wind up using social media in the ordinary course of business, they’ve started incubating a healthy social media culture now (Deloitte has two Twitter accounts, she said–not sure if that’s company wide or Seattle or where).
Thanks MWW Group for a tasty lunch, an eloquent panel, and interesting attendees. (For more insights, and plenty of plain old redundant Twitter chatter from attendees, tweets concerning the event can be found at #mww2dot0.)
bruce2b 