As I sit back in class listening to a lecture on American history, I start to think about mankind and where we, as a species, have come from. As humans, we have evolved and advanced in so many ways. We have changed, we have grown and we have created a beautiful world that is filled with opportunity. As I envision this world hundreds of years ago, I begin to think about the things in life that have stayed constant over time.  One thing that sticks straight out in my mind is communication. Communication is something humans have always needed, and it has always been used and wanted, but there has always been issues in proper utilization.

Before the invention of computers, television, radio, newspapers, telephones and even typewriters there was a world of people who communicated strictly through language. They used hieroglyphics and body movement to reach out to one another. These people didn’t have the ease of communicating like we do today.

Nowadays, somewhere along the lines of traditional media the audience has been forgotten. These publics have been left without a voice, and they have been waiting for the opportunity to speak out. With the arrival of social media, their time has finally come. Now, as more technology advances it is easier to participate in two-way communication. But, sometimes PR practitioners forget the purpose of two-way communication, and they don’t fully utilize the gift of social media.

With the rise of twitter and other social media outlets we can send messages to anyone, anywhere at any time. As public relations specialists, we are stepping foot into a media world full of opportunity. We cannot forget the benefits of reaching out to our publics and fellow business associates. We have the opportunity to utilize communication to its full potential, and yet thousands of media professionals ignore the tools that can lead us to better places.

Brian Solis, author of Putting the Publics Back in Public Relations, talks about social media and how people should use it to reach target audiences. He digs deep into new communication tactics, and the reasons why we need to rekindle our relationships with our publics. In his topic on marketing and PR he brings up the point that we need to “socialize to survive.” This meaning, we need to get out there and talk with people to build relationships. In his book, Solis discusses surviving through socializing and why it is important. He said “It’s the ability to identify meaningful conversations, comprehend them, determine those valuable enough to participate, and then feed that collective insight back into the organization for positive change.”

In a new social community, with millions of opportunities to reach out to people, we need to branch out and build relationships. These relationships are not strictly between clients and audiences, but also between businesses to businesses. “The goal is to connect brands, and the people representing them, to new groups of important people in the places where they discover and share new content and, in turn, interact with each other,” Solis said in chapter 14 titled The New “Marketing” Rules.

In a world where people need to unite together to succeed, people are finding differences to pull themselves apart. Media professionals need to put any differences aside and work together to utilize every tool that may benefit their main goal. One part of the new marketing rules is getting to know your target audience and realizing that they are people. These people need to be properly communicated to, and they need to have the opportunity to communicate back. These people are important, we all are, and we need to better understand them to better utilize proper two-way communication.

Tags: Business, marketing, Public Relations, putting the pubics back into public relations, social media, solis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 6:27 am and is filed under Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.