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Posted on August 11th, 2008 by Chris Abraham
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Leo Bottary, SVP at Mullen, asked a pretty great question over on LinkedIn, What motivated you to learn about social media?  I took a stab at answering in my own way:

I came to social media PR the other way around. I have been online since the world of the bulletin board systems (BBS) and the Well, later in the 90s. I have been a deep member of social networks forever. Anyway, in 2003 I became a social media marketer at New Media Strategies and then moved onto Edelman.

Now, I am a social media native-speaker learning more and more PR and marketing practices.

So, I guess my question is, what motivated you to wait so long? Social media and online social networks have been alive and well since at least the early 80s in the form of message boards, forums, USENET, MUDs, MOOs, and IRC.

My fear is is that there will be loads of PR practitioners who will only invest in social media and online community because they have to and not because they’re passionate about it. I think this will all change when people stop making as much of a big deal about online social media and just take the mad communications and relationship skills and passions and just map them onto another forum: the Internet.

Why can’t PR practitioners do this? Short answer: “we” don’t consider all of those voices and all of those people and all of that text to be connected to real, powerful, and passionate people.

Leo, thanks so much for asking this question. I don’t know if I answered but I am happy to have thought through it.

So, what motivated you to learn about social media? Also, what motivated you to go into marketing or PR, if that’s what you do with yourself these days?

Here’s Leo’s complete question-in-full:

Leo Bottary

August 11, 2008

Chris Abraham

Viewed

What motivated you to learn about social media?

I don’t believe you can serve today’s public relations client without a working understanding of social media and the broader discipline of digital communication. Why should clients pay hundreds of dollars an hour for PR-lite? As PR professionals, it’s our responsibility to understand all the relationship tools at our disposal, not just some of them.

I got started because I felt like a fish out of water when the subject came up during a client/prospect meeting. And of course, I’m learning every day. What motivated you?

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Filed under: LinkedIn, PR Blogging, PR Blogs, PR Tactics, Public Affairs, Public Relations, Public Relations Industry, Social Meda, Social Media Marketing, Social Media PR, Social Media Press Release, Social Networking, Social Networks, pr

4 Responses to “What motivated you to learn about social media?”

  1. Leo Bottary, on August 11th, 2008 at 5:57 pm Said:

    Chris, thanks for raising the issue here as well. I plan to discuss it on my blog over the next several weeks as a means of getting people to share what they’ve learned and inspire further exploration. My post today highlights a BusinessWeek cover from 2005 that included the phrase: “Catch up…or catch you later!’ So true.

  2. Jen Zingsheim, on August 12th, 2008 at 6:44 pm Said:

    Fun question! My background is in PR and politics, and even when I left politics, I paid attention to it. When bloggers poked holes in Dan Rather’s story in the 2004 election, I got interested in blogs, but just by reading them.

    Was hired by Chip Griffin for CustomScoop’s blog research & analysis group in early ‘06, and dove right into other social media elements. It’s been great fun, and having the PR background certainly helps me to think through social media communications for our clients.

  3. Johnathan Crawford, on August 13th, 2008 at 2:17 am Said:

    Participating in social media requires a lot of focused listening, which is something a lot of us marketing folks are not good at. I was motivated to learn about Social Media because it parallels the dynamics of a cocktail party. At a cocktail party, you can’t just blurt out your thoughts or ideas withouit risk of being ousted. You have to listen for just the right time to comment. Blurting out is what traditional advertising, marketing and even PR does - they’re intrusive. SM is forcing everyone to listen before speaking. That’s why I’m here. Social MNedia is just a giant cocktail party where we all have to be patient, listen,a nd then periodically offer a charming comment. Oh yeah, it helps to have a cocktail in your hand :-)

  4. Chris Abraham, on August 13th, 2008 at 4:37 pm Said:

    Jonathan, you inspired me to dig around and find something we wrote over here a while ago. I have been going through Google Docs and discovered an internal document I would like to share with you. Taylor Donlan wrote to explain to our new staff how best to reach out to and engage online on behalf of our clients and in general. Check it out and tell me what you think:

    When we approach someone online, we need to approach in the same way we would in the real world. If our goal is to develop relationships, we cannot “go for the kill” instantly. Instead, we must engage in some small talk first. We must engage the blogger and his or her post first, well before any discussion of our client or their related services.

    To use Chris’s metaphor, in a professional context, we want them to ask us for our business card. We want to get them so interested in whatever service or client we are touting that they are asking us for more information. This does not mean we air drop business cards everywhere or give one to every person on the street – those cards are thrown away. In the real world, it is much more effective to develop some kind of individual connection before exchanging business cards – they are much more likely to keep the cards, and remember you. In the future, they are more likely to be open to doing something for you.

    For a more basic metaphor, imagine meeting someone in a bar. You don’t go right up to someone and jump into a conversation or ask them for favors. Instead you ease into conversation by engaging something that you notice about them or that stands out about your general surroundings. You need to build some rapport in terms that are common to both parties before you can get to any deeper level.

    In the blog world, we are trying to do the same. When you make a comment on a post show that you have paid some attention to their post and add something meaningful - feel free to Google the subject matter and share some additional information or just share your general feelings on the subject matter. Then and only then is it acceptable to broach the subject of our client or their services.

    Whenever possible, we pose our engagement campaigns in terms of offering “a gift” – usually a service or piece of information that will likely prove useful to the blogger and/or their readers at no cost. While this “free gift” approach reduces the appearance of any spam quality to our engagements, it is still necessary to ease into the gift offering. We are not in the business of spamming, and it will not be tolerated.

    Another important point is that we believe in transparency. We are not interested in being deceitful. Admit proudly that you work for Abraham Harrison and whomever the client might be. Our engagement campaigns aim to offer a gift to bloggers, and there is no shame in our business.

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