Journalists And Social Media: What PRs Should Know
This evening I have the pleasure of hosting a CIPR Greater London Group event on journalism and social media at Hill & Knowlton. As speakers we have Nic Newman, the BBC’s Future Media & Technology Controller, Journalism and Digital Distribution, and Journalism.co.uk Editor Laura Oliver.
Journalism has been changing for a number of years, with many people claiming that news and media as we know it is dying. A slight exaggeration. Social media though is having an effect of newsgathering and it is this and what PRs should know about it that we’ll be investigating this evening.
Amongst the many questions I’ll will be asking:
- How the BBC and other news outlets use social media to research stories and generate contacts?
- How social media is being integrated into the newsgathering process?
- How journalists use social media to share content and links with their audiences. Is social media opening up journalists notebooks and making newsgathering more transparent? And what can PRs learn from this?
- Importantly, given that social media is about the now — feelings and reactions of people, what do journalists look for online and on social media sites to generate a story and what can PRs learn from the change in power and how this helps journalists?
Social media is not just redefining news but changing how PRs work. Long gone are the days when the reputation was at risk of a negative piece in the media. Now people, consumers, on social networks can generate a feeling that can affect a brand. Power is moving to the people and this is something that as PRs we need to understand.
If you’d like to know more then guests will be twittering live from the event using the #LondonPRlive hashtag.
I’ll be updating my blog tomorrow with my thoughts.
