Share This Chapter 15: Media Relations Modernized

Chapter 15 of "Share This" talks about Media Relations Modernized.  According to the book, the fundamentals of good media relations practice are “relevance, authority, engagement and relationship” (129).

PR practitioners play a number of important roles in relation to social media such as “acting as a change consultant-advising, guiding and training the different parts of the organization in effective and coherent social media engagement to ensure associated risks are managed and that there is consistency of approach” (129).

In this chapter, they refer to media relations as influencer relations because in the world we live in today, the goal of a PR practitioner is to “influence.”  At one point, the main forms of media connection were only through email and telephone.  While these are still used commonly today, we now have more forms of media, such as Twitter, to engage conversation relating to the media as a whole.

 

“A recent study found that over 80% of journalists maintain a Twitter profile and the number one reason for doing so was so they could share their stories more widely” (130).

Some main points that I took away from this chapter were the many ways to identify relevant media influence on Twitter:

• Get Involved: being active on Twitter by sharing information and engaging in discussions
• Look up current contacts: research contacts that you already know to discover which social media channels they are using themselves.
• Search: use tools such as Twitter Search or Twitter Mention to find people relevant to you
• Curated lists: sites like Listorious and PeerIndex show lists of Twitter accounts that have already been curated into groups by other people

In a world where news often breaks, media influencers must listen and engage in conversation as much as possible.  Twitter provides an excellent source for keeping active in social media.  The importance of Twitter in terms of communication is concluded in the book pretty well:

“PR practitioners must therefore ensure that they have invested the time in identifying which significant media influencers to their organization’s objectives are among them, and ensure they have the skills, knowledge and systems in place to effectively listen and potentially engage with them in this dynamic medium” (135).