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PR Agency Advice: Social Media for Brands not Optional

Reimagine PR Social MediaIn 10 years:
A decade from now, your company probably won’t have a social media team. It will be the social media team.Social media experts are all the rage now but in 10 years, that job category will likely cease to exist.

Sounds crazy but it’s not:
A decade from now, almost every job will be filled by people who will be expected to do more than their basic job.That means regardless of what you do at your company right now, you will be expected to engage with the right publics at the right times in the right ways through the right channels while doing whatever the main function of your job is.

No excuses.

But here’s the problem:
Most brands aren’t positioning themselves for the future that’s coming.
Most brand are somewhat active on Social Media:

  • 55% on Facebook
  • 54% on Twitter
  • 51% on Linkedin
  • 79% have blogs

Fortune 500’s are more active on social media.

But staggeringly few companies are really putting the work in now to ensure they are competitive when every job is expected to have a level of public connectedness.

And in fact far too many companies are stuck in ways of thinking that could get them in real trouble.

Any of these sound familiar?

  • Just hire a young intern to handle social media. They grew up with tech all around them
  • Just go on any volunteer site and grab anyone to do social media
  • We can just tack the social media piece on at the end

You’ve probably heard them at one time or another. But banish them from your thinking. Because they are relics of a dying past.

We reject what scares us:
When people don’t quite get social media, they tend to minimize it.

In fact, I was in a conversation with other communications professionals the other day, and a couple of people actually urged someone starting a new venture to “ignore all this social media stuff” and return to communication planning as it was 30 years ago.

Um, what?
No. The world moves relentlessly forward whether we want it to or not.

Your customers want what they want. Not what you want them to want. And they want to be closer to the brands they give their time and money to.

That means access:
If your brand has not yet embraced social media, you need to ask yourself these questions:

  • If our brand is not where customers are looking for us, will it help or hurt us?
  • Is it good or bad that we are not seeking out ways to attract new and younger customers?
  • if there is ever a crisis of any kind, do we need an efficient, practiced way of getting the right information out to people or would I rather be reliant on others outside of the company and beyond my control?
  • Are we ready to engage our customers who want more access to us and information we can provide them?
  • Am I willing to bet my job that not embracing current and growing business trends is the right thing to do?

Then ask the C-suite if it matters to them if the company is around ten years from now. If they say “yes,” it’s time to get your social media house in order.

Susan McLennan

Susan McLennan

Founder at ReImaginePR
Susan McLennan helps brands become better storytellers both through the media and through direct and digital communications. She is an award-winning communicator with a background in television production who has secured media coverage through some of the top media outlets in the world and created content that has won hearts and changed minds locally, nationally and internationally.
Susan McLennan

@SusanMcLennan