Social Media’s Impact on PR

By Samantha Evans, Intern (@samevans24)

Bob Geller, SVP, as well as social media wiz and avid blogger, held a very informative social media educational session. Prior to the session and my time at Fusion, I only knew the bare minimum about social media outlets. (I actually just created a personal Twitter account two days ago. As I have still not decided on a direction to take my Twitter postings, I did finally decide on a user name.) Thanks to my parents, my name is extremely common. So common that every single username combination was already taken. After about an hour, I ended up going with samevans24, which is equally (not) original. Now I can finally say: you can find me @samevans24!

Anyway, back to Bob’s educational session. What I found to be most interesting and relevant to my time and work at Fusion was Bob’s explanation of social media’s relationship with public relations. He described the inordinate amount of social media users and outlets today as creating a lot of “noise” in which “anyone has a megaphone.” He explained because anyone can post a blog or engage in social media, there is an increase in “noise,” which at times questions if PR remains a necessity.

PR professional’s role in the media spectrum continues to be extremely important because they are among the very few who are formally trained to understand the media and of course, social media. Their understanding leads to the successful story telling of a brand in these spectrums. This means, PR pros have not only perfected the way to tell a story, but when and where to pitch it, all depending on the subject, target audience, and other variables. Therefore, only without PR expertise, can content can drown in the “noise” of social media.