“An average 74 million people visited a newspaper Web site each month in the third quarter of 2009, equaling just under 40 percent of all active U.S. Internet users,” MediaPost’s Erik Sass reported. The data, Sass said, comes from the Newspaper Association of America, which cited researched by Nielsen Online.
via PR junkie.
Many agencies are creating social media departments — or putting one person in charge of online engagement. I think that’s a flawed strategy for a variety of reasons, but primarily because there isn’t a clear-cut definition of where social media starts and traditional PR ends — and that’s how things fall through the cracks.
Take media relations as an example. If an agency adopts the “silo” approach, blogger relations falls under the social media person’s duties. But, is that one person supposed to connect with bloggers and identify online outlets for every client? That’s just not realistic. I’d venture to guess it’s actually short-sighted. How can one person keep tabs on the strategy for every single client (especially at medium and larger agencies) to ensure on-target pitches? Online and offline pitching should be strategic; otherwise, you end up with a shotgun approach — securing clips for the sake of getting clips, an outdated, ineffective tactic.
In reality, all PR people ought to be pitching online media outlets in addition to traditional publications. As the study mentioned above indicates, an increasing number of people are turning to online news sites. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you take the “silo” approach, and don’t require account execs to explore online opportunities, aren’t you missing out on all those readers? It may be easier for the agency to have one “point person” for all things social, but is that what’s actually best for clients? Wouldn’t integration be more effective?
I’m interested in all perspectives on this topic, so please share yours in the comments!