Has social media replaced traditional means of publicity?

There is no doubt that Social media has helped make the work of publicists quite easy. But we need to ask if the easy two-way conversation and quick content sharing on social media has replaced the time tested and trusted press releases and media manipulations of the local publicist.

Some PR practitioners still use social media like they use traditional media. They use it as virtual notice boards, posting messages with little interaction and little feed-back.

However, for clients who have access and total control over their social media accounts, like twitter, the job of the publicist on social media can be a little dicey.  Print journalists, other media outfits are all on social media with direct access to the clients.  What this means is a direct news source without waiting to be issued a formal press release by a publicist.

The Nigerian music industry has shown how this works in very plain light.  News bloggers and newspaper editors are quick to monitor tweets from musicians and stories are written most times without questions asked or comments received from the artiste’s spokesperson.

Controversies have been generated, and its embers fanned on social media, from artistes making unguarded comments or deliberate aggressive tweets, while the publicist is left to clean up the mess and make it all magically go away by issuing lukewarm press releases.

So what do we do as publicists?  How do we contain our clients and maintain relevance in this fast growing business of Public relations?

We need to understand that social media is not the enemy. In fact it is complimentary and it should be studied and applied to make publicity easier. 

We use social media to quickly share information with our target audience, gather real-time intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and influential people.