The PR pro 2.0

A good friend of mine, former local TV exec and now multimedia guy Woody Coates (cheap plug for Woody who any organization would be lucky to have and someone will realize that soon and hire him), emailed me the other day asking me if I was considering bringing on a “community manager” to bolster the THP social media arsenal.

A community manager is a title for a person who can marry online and offline communications for a client or organization.  They spend their time monitoring blogs, tweeting, and scouring social media sites on one side, and doing actual face-to-face networking on the other.  They represent the brand/company, they market, they go after new business, etc, all in the name of representing and expanding their organization’s community.

The best example of a community manager that I know of is Amber Naslund of Radian6, a social media monitoring firm.  Her latest blog post talks about the role of the community manager and the myths attached to the position.

As public relations firms (and other organizations) continue into this murky world of social media.  They are challenged with this decision.  Either silo social media into departments or business units with specialists that they can sell separately, or train everyone in the art and creation of social media so they can add it to their already varied public relations arsenal.

It is a decision and I’ve been mulling recently and I have come to a decision.  I have lived in the siloed world in my past life and the truth is SILOS DON’T WORK.  Oh, they sound good at the beginning, when you can trot out specialists and sell clients on the shiny new toy.  But as anyone with a three-year-old knows, today’s shiny new toy becomes tomorrow’s attic fodder.  When the kid (or client in this case) moves onto the next thing you are left with nothing but people looking at each other, lots of overhead, and tough decisions to make.

It is easier to train everyone to become community managers of sorts.  The truth is most good PR people, especially ones married to specific accounts, need to know enough to expand their clients’ business through communications already.  There are two things stopping them from becoming community managers in the social media world:

• Training
• Equipment

At THP there are a few of us that have thrown ourselves into the social media world full force, a few others that understand it, and others that are eager if we could only stop the clock and take the time to train them.  The truth is we likely have some untapped talent that once we also add the proper equipment (more cameras, some higher end design and edit equipment, training on social media platforms, podcasting equipment, etc.) will be able to show more than we have asked of them to date.

So it is time for us to take the next step.  Not only at THP, but in the PR world across the board.  As I have mentioned in past blog, the public relations industry is best positioned to be the social media standard bearers.  The only things that are stopping us is training and tools.

We can all be community managers at some level, can’t we?  Shouldn’t we?