“Parenting” in Social Media

In public relations, we often stand on the side lines, unnoticed. Of course we may serve as the face of a company when speaking to the media, but I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of our work keeps us hidden: speech writing, employee newsletter composition, media coaching, advising, research, etc. It is our client or company who should shine. If we as public relations practitioners are getting more glory than our clients or respective companies, we risk our clients asking, “Why aren’t you getting me that good publicity?”

The goal of my company is to promote our clients, who are often political candidates. As a Republican firm, we are working to play catch up with the Democrats as well as keep one step ahead of the Republicans when it comes to integrating social media tools with a political campaign.

Democrats have mastered social media tools (see Senator Barack Obama’s Twitter) during the time they spent as the political minority. Many democratic candidates turned to social media to reach out new publics. As a result, they received a whole new following. Young people began to take notice to these candidates who were reaching to them at their level, whether through social networking, blogs or online videos.

Now my company is anxious to get our own clients involved in this sweeping wave. As many of the candidates are only comfortable with traditional media, we have begun promoting our own company through social media outlets to illustrate how it is done. As a firm yielding videos, we automatically jumped onboard with YouTube. Next we considered joining Facebook and creating a blog, but at some point we stopped to consider if this was in the best interest of the company and our clients. After all, not all publicity is good publicity, even when it is free and initiated by the user.

Social media can catch like wildfire and bring us to the top of the charts in no time at all. Even terrible videos garner hundreds of YouTube views over time. But will our popularity convince our clients that we are able to practice what we preach, or will it send a loud message that we want the spotlight?

Social media has few rules or guidelines. This is new for all of us, so we have to make up our answers as we go. So do me one favor: if one day you do see my company on Facebook, please make sure you say something nice.