The clergy and the world of social media

A clear sign that social media's presence cannot be ignored can be seen in the Vatican's interest in developing its own social-media identity. Today, bishops from across Europe met at a special conference with various executives from Facebook, Google, Wikipedia and YouTube. Additionally, the Pope released an app earlier this year called H2Onews, which is sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. H2ONews includes writings, audio and video news. The Pope also has a Facebook, a YouTube channel and Wiki.

My initial reaction to reading about these developments bordered on incredulity. However, when I think about this situation in more detail, I find myself thinking that I shouldn't be surprised.

According to examiner.com,"Observers are speculating this educational conference is in actuality an attempt to more closely monitor the development and spread of the church's persona and overall message."

The Vatican does have a vested interest in what is being said about the Pope and the day-to-day activities of the Vatican itself. Not to sound as if I am saying that the Vatican is a business, but their goal in venturing into the world of social media is not unlike that of many of the businesses that currently subscribe to the multitude of social media platforms.

The fact that such a highly-respected religious leader understands the importance of social media speaks to the fact that social media is something that should not be ignored.

Social media should be embraced. It should not be threatening. However, all social media strategies deserve the same level of attention to planning and implementation as other public relations strategies.

The only question that remains is: What will Pope Benedict XVI tweet about?

The intern and the world of social media

As public relations major we are constantly bombarded with advice on how to get the most out of our education through internships. Every authority figure that we come in contact with seems to have their own take on the situation. This barrage of advice throws us into a frenzy to snatch up the right internships before our peers take them.

While we learn practical knowledge in class, there are few exceptions of where we can utilize our vast social media knowledge with that classroom knowledge. It would seem that this is changing on the internship front. Many public relations professionals are grappling with how to best implement social media to generate more buzz about their clients. Because we as college students have learned to use social media intuitively, it has become apparent that our expertise could come in handy while we intern for various companies.

A blog post from Disruptology listed the 10 Social Media Tasks for Summer Interns, which includes account creation/ customization, RSS building and blogging. Some of us might be a little unfamiliar with RSS building, but I believe that it is a skill that can be easily mastered. When it comes to account creation, we have that down. And thanks to this assignment, we have blogging experience, if we didn't beforehand.

I will be happy to report this information to my mom because she has been hounding me to delete my Facebook account. She thinks that nobody will want to hire me if I have a Facebook. The implication of an increasing dependence on social media is that maybe we should have a detailed knowledge of multiple social media platforms so that we are more marketable to existing employers.

The entrepreneur and social media

One thing that I gathered while doing research for my presentation in Dr. Junker's class is that most people see MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter (what I like to call "The Big Three") as the only forms of social media that a company can use to generate discussion about the company. While this may not be the case several years from now, these three social media platforms dominate most of the discussion on this topic.

While reading through the most recent posts on Mashable, I came across an article detailing the ten best social media tools for entrepreneurs. Number 10, Monitter, was the most interesting to me. Monitter has three columns that search through recent Twitter updates on the three topics of your choice.

This ties in with one point that I stressed during our presentation: As a public relations professional, it is important to know what is being said about your company so that you can combat a crisis before it gets out of hand. It should also be noted that a company might receive positive feedback, which can be used in a strategic way to keep the company moving in a positive direction.

What was most exciting to me was when I entered my employer's name and the press release that I wrote and uploaded to PRWeb last week was included in several tweets from various blogs. If I can find information about a press release that I wrote on Twitter, I am pretty sure that a company that that works to improve their search engine optimization will find themselves on Monitter as well.

While this social media platform is not one of the "Big Three" that I mentioned earlier, its existence, for now, is dependent on Twitter, which only reinforces the point that businesses of any size need to pay attention to Twitter and the effect it will have on the company.

The blog and the social media elitists

While trying to find a topic to discuss in this week's blog I came across a blog discussing whether or not blogs fit into the ever-expanding realm of social media. I find it interesting that there are people who don't see blogs as an aspect of social media. Personally, I see blogs as an important part of social media that a business should have within its arsenal.

Why wouldn't blogs be considered a part of social media? The informal nature of a blog encourages both reader and writer to have a more open dialogue. While this notion of open dialogue has been adopted by more traditional forms of media, which might make blogs seem more like traditional media than they actually are, one could argue that traditional media is trying to appear more like social media.

Maybe social media elitists (if they even exist) want users to believe that social media is a new creature that has yet to be tamed, and that blogs are simply too old to be a part of social media.

I think the fact that anyone can blog and be heard makes the blog an integral part of social media that we should not discredit. The relevancy of the blog cannot be denied. This assignment highlights that fact.

Social media and the public relations professional

It would seem that as a public relations major I cannot last an entire day without hearing about how social media has changed the way people communicate with each other. Businesses, celebrities and even political candidates have jumped onto the bandwagon, which forces their competitors to follow suit. This cycle does nothing but reinforce social media's impact on our culture. Another hot topic that is discussed in most public relations classes is how to turn classroom knowledge into a job, especially in an economic crisis where technology changes so rapidly most communications textbooks are outdated the instant they hit the shelf. Because of these two observations, I have found that public relations majors do a disservice to themselves by ignoring the impact social media has on learning and job prospects.

Jason Falls, a writer for the blog Social Media Explorer, covered a study that was conducted by TrendStream, Korn/Ferry International and PRSA, which concluded that public relations and marketing professionals should understand the relevance of social media if they wish to find a job in the industry. If anyone is still wondering if they should be paying attention to social media and its effects on public relations, this study answers that question.

Falls also touched on how social media affects public relations educators. Falls wrote,"...but more importantly, public relations educators, need to quickly recognize that what we’re teaching those new to the profession had better not be what we were taught." This emphasizes the fact that our professors are learning this stuff with us, however their experience helps them put these changes in context for us as students.

While knowledge of social media is necessary for us as students, it does not mean that we cannot ignore the basic principles of writing news releases or knowledge learned from our trusty AP Stylebook, which will come in handy while we evolve with social media.