Brave New World

In the universe of the practice and profession of public relations -- or communications management -- the brave new world is social media.

The field of PR is all about relationship-building, and what better way to build a relationship than through the Internet? Be it Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or whatever the application "du jour," the future of public relations will be grounded in social media. As the title of the new book by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge suggests, the digital revolution is actually "Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR."

The notion that social media is the trendy topic among PR professionals was clearly in evidence at the 2010 Communicator's Conference entitled "Making Your Case: Selling Your Strategy, Your Story and Yourself" held at the Governor Hotel in Portland on Wednesday, May 12. The conference had both keynote and breakout sessions: many focused on the use of social media in public relations.

As the Immediate Past Chair of the North Pacific District of the Public Relations Society of America and a public relations instructor at the University of Oregon in need of portfolio reviewers, I was naturally interested in attending the conference. Unfortunately, I waited too long to register: the conference was sold out by Friday, May 7. However, my friends in the Portland Metro Chapter found a way to get me in, and I didn't even have to sneak in through the dumbwaiter.

Keynote speaker Chris Brogan noted that attention spans of many are easily averted; we're not just talking 500 channels here, we're talking 1,000 distractions. Messages are easily lost.

So how do you maintain the attention of your audience? His answers were interesting. To paraphrase: "the more things change, the more they remain the same." This could have been the conference theme. He assured us that he would not suggest anything new so much as distinguish how communications have been altered by social media.

The big change, he noted, is velocity. Used to be that a 24-hour turnaround for customer response was okey-doke. No more. If you don't get back to a reporter with an answer to a question almost instantaneously, you're probably hiding something. Another change is mobility. With smart phones like iPhones and Blackberries, communications are nearly moving at the speed of light (note the folks in the second row in the photo below).

Noontime keynoter Jim Signorelli believes that whatever the medium, the message need to be memorable. To sell your story, you need to facilitate empathy in your messaging, and instead of "unique selling propositions," you need to address "unique value propositions."

Finally, closing keynoter Peter Shankman contends that just because we can reach more people than ever before using social media, in shorter amounts of time, it doesn't mean you know what to do with them once you have their attention.

His advice for social media mavens who want to be successful in communicating with their audiences? Instead of becoming proficient at texting -- NALOPKT and AWGTHTGTTA -- Shankman suggests learning a second language, preferably English.