As part of the day job I run an online PR training course which aims to help PR people understand and navigate the often complex and technical online media world. While some elements of PR will never change - regardless of whether it's done online or off - it is no secret that social media is throwing up a number of challenges for the PR traditionalists. Last week I delivered a course in Lithuania and afterwards one of the delegates commented that I use a high proportion of case studies where a company's reputation was impacted negatively. At first I disagreed with her notion but having given it some thought I concluded that, yes, perhaps despite my vested interest in online PR I do focus heavily on the negative.
Reason why? Subconsciously I think I do it primarily to deter fellow PR people from making similar mistakes from what I highlight in the training. Some of the traditional PR approaches don't apply to the online world and the best way to illustrate this is by showing real life PR gaffs as case studies. From this I hope that people understand that the result of what they do online is archived and cached forever. It can't be deleted, hidden or covered up.
The hugely popular technology start-up blog, TechCrunch, this week carried a blog post about a PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) social media seminar which aims to look at how to engage bloggers effectively and ethically. Part of the seminar will discuss how a New York based publicist allegedly screwed up by sending unsolicited press releases to a group of bloggers who attended a trade show. A discussion on the issue can be found on TechCrunch's blog post and on the PRSA Colorado blog which also includes commentary by the alledged publicist.
Make your own mind up about the situation. This blog post isn't about pointing fingers and saying who is right or wrong but aims to highlight that, since the advent of social media, we are all potentially unwilling case studies. Not sure about you but I don't fancy seeing my picture on a Powerpoint slide on how not to do PR.
