Speed hosts ‘No More Hot Air’ Social Media Week breakfast

Social Media Week has generated some criticism in recent days, unfairly in my view, for the saturation of events.

Undoubtedly the market is overhyped and is approaching bubble-like proportions. An element of the industry is taking on the hallmarks of a cult with self-proclaimed gurus ranking their prowess by follower numbers on Facebook and Twitter.

But a series of events that shines a spotlight on the market and its emerging potential can only be a good thing. And for the 120-odd people that attended events at 33 Digital, Porter Novelli and Speed this morning I hope it was worthwhile. I’ve never known a time when the PR industry has been so open and willing to share ideas.

We called our breakfast event this morning ‘No More Hot Air’ because social media is characterised by lots of talk and little action. We used it as an opportunity to showcase work across the agency on behalf of clients such as The Economist, Interoute and Tesco.

Social media doesn’t change the way in which human beings communicate. You can see social networks in action in a pub every day. And in this context the person with the most influence and the greatest reputation is not a Facebook geek but the landlady.

It’s not a fundamental change in how people communicate but it is a fundamental change for business.

The conventional approach of media relations no longer works alone – the media for communicating with the audience are now diverse: print media, social media, all kinds of media. And all of this is not only confusing, it’s bloody difficult.

We’ve seen the rise of specialist social media or word-of-mouth agencies to address this emerging opportunity. They have a role, but it is just one piece of the new jigsaw. For their part PR agencies have taken three distinct approaches to social media:

The creation of a team to focus exclusively on social media programmes. Potentially short term, not inclusive and creates a silo of expertise
Hiring a high profile individual or small team to handle digital assignments. Likewise not inclusive and silos expertise
Building skills throughout the organisation and integrating digital into a client’s campaign where it appropriate. New, pragmatic, bold, Speed’s gig.

12-months ago we embarked on a ruthless training camp across the business covering monitoring, planning, content development, networks and measurement.

It’s a process that will be ongoing for the next 18 months at least. But it’s critical to the future of the business. My personal belief is that if you work in the PR industry and want to continue working in the industry you need to equip yourself with digital skills.

Also posted on www.speedcommunications.com