By Andrew Edson
All we read about in the press or pseudo press these days is social media – tweeting, Twittering, Facebooking, Foursquaring, linking in, ad infinitum.
PR and IR practitioners – inside the corporate ranks and outside in the consulting world – constantly tell us we must tweet, send out sound bytes to our growing networks of friends, camp followers and countless others who may have been hypnotized or mesmerized by Jim Jones.
And, to no surprise, we – the PR and IR profession – are telling clients and companies they need to embrace all social media channels as if it's the second coming of the Messiah.
So, we tell our life's secrets, remove the shroud of privacy – how many burglars peruse the social media channels to plan and plot their next heist? – and insist this is the future.
I hope not.
Fast forward to the recent NIRI (National Investor Relations Institute) annual gathering in June in San Diego where social media's future and use was widely debated.
It's foremost on many minds. A growing number of consultants have preached the gospel, are teaching courses, webinars and the like, and have found the social media channel converts into found new business.
Likely, they are the only ones at this point to have monetized this new communication. There aren't too many others.
Maybe, just maybe, the time will come when social media will drive the IR engine as we know; however, that time is not now.
It's still scary and too problematic for IR practitioners. After all, are you going to ask your CEO to write a blog, answer the responses that he (or she) will undoubtedly get, and produce fresh content all of the time? Get a life.
Who will run the company, meet earnings expectations asked by Wall Street or exceed them? Twitter? Ridiculous.
But, to reach new constituencies or classes of shareholders – assuming you are at or represent a publicly-held corporation – you do have to think "outside the box" and whether it means a better use of search engine optimization tools to widen the reach of your communications, adding a hyperlink to previous disclosure, sprucing up the FAQ's on your Web site, etc., this is de rigueur.
It's still an uphill battle, however, with the company's legal team, never mind management, to fully utilize the ever omnipresent social media channels.
Nonetheless, changes are afoot. Then and now…
It wasn't that far off when companies dispatched messengers simultaneously to Dow Jones and Reuters (now Thomson-Reuters) – Bloomberg was a very distant third back then – to deliver an earnings release.
At the appointed moment, they would call the company to announce they had arrived at their media point and a countdown would commence. When the cadence hit one, the messengers could hand over the release simultaneously.
That delivery mode became antiquated when the pre-eminent newswires like PR Newswire and BusinessWire, and even an upstart Marketwire, got their groove.
But with Reg FD (Fair Disclosure) and the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act still very much with us – although Sarb-Ox has its critics eager to kill it – IR folks have actually gotten used to it and may not want further change. Change causes angst.
Still, the newest drama evolving is the allowing of corporate websites to place their news and timely information on company sites without coughing up the big dollars the private newswires demand and get.
Consider a one paragraph news release that announces an addition to a company's website without all of the folderol, boilerplate and requisite disclosure (aka Safe Harbor) statement.
Often times, the length of the Safe Harbor language alone exceeds the news in the release, let alone the word count. And, with the newswire transmissions, you pay for word count and circuit selection for starters. This change is coming a lot sooner than social media.
While we are at it, let's be better spellers – don't rely on "Spell Checker" – and proofers as there is nothing better than the naked eye or several pairs of eyes to read and correct a document or news release or website, too.
Let's stop using "cc" which means carbon copy. After all, how many of us have never used carbon paper, whiteout, a telex or mimeo machine, or possibly even a facsimile machine? It's a declining universe, and almost generational. Why, even The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., likely has or will have a display of these communications tools of the past.
Finally, as much as we read about the demise of the written word and print media such as newspapers, there will continue to be a vital and viable role for them as influencers, even if more newspapers fade into oblivion or try to compete with AOL's Patch.com or similar pioneers like the website my02218.com in suburban Providence, R.I., started by a PR practitioner.
Who knows, they may be on the cusp of succeeding and realizing the ability to monetize before many social media channels do.
At the same time, we shouldn't rule out the cause and effect of what the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal – the New York Times too in short order – are doing to get and keep readers by cutting off free access.
They've realized this is the end of their welfare state and that they have a responsibility to their subscribers, shareholders and employees – all important constituents.
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Andrew Edson heads Andrew Edson & Associates, Inc., New York and Long Island (www.edsonpr.com).
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