Do All Roads Lead To…Social Relations?
Where is all this headed? Like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, public relations and social media seem destined to join forces. They are two great things that work even better together. PR desperately needed a hero, and social media swooped in like Superwoman at just the right moment—offering cheap, ubiquitous, direct communications tools to battle the Great Recession. Ironically, the savvy new social media experts realized they needed PR to broaden their appeal beyond Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs (the social media equivalents of press releases). They are now seeking the maturity and wisdom of PR practitioners, as well as pursuing broad acceptance by people who control the communications’ purse strings. PR and social media are in a virtual online horse race, without a clear winner. Google “public relations” and you get 35,000,000 results. “Social media” is close behind with 31,000,000 results. Note that the latter results were garnered in the last 2-3 years, compared to PR
