When social media PR goes bad - with hilarious consequences

Just to clarify, this isn’t a journos good, PRs bad type post - many things that PRs do help make my working day easier and I also understand that they’ve got a client to manage, with massively differing priorities. Also, some of my best friends are PRs.

This also isn’t a dig at Emma Potter - I’m sure she’s lovely. I just don’t know her - and that’s kind of the point.

There’s been a recent rise in the number of PR people using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, presumably so they can better understand the journos they work with, among other things.

Twitter, if you haven’t used it, on the surface appears to be one of the most pointless sites in the world - and largely it is. Think Facebook, but with everything stripped out except the ability to post status updates. You don’t even make friends with other people there, you simply follow their updates and if they like you enough back they might follow you too.

On the face of it, there appears to be no real reason for it to exist. That is, until you start following around ten-20 people and around the same number starts following you. Then you discover the real point of the site, which is the ability to respond to other people’s updates. Say I’m following someone going by the name of oversharingisnatural. If they post an update and I’ve got a hil-a-rious response to it, I can reply to their post by starting an update with @oversharingisnatural like: “@oversharingisnatural Yes - but what did the CAT do?!?”

With this bit in place, it becomes a bit like a mass open instant message system but with some of the time restraints removed (although you do get extra points for fast witty responses). There is one flaw in this reply system, however - unless I subscribe to your updates (and I only follow people I actually know - apart from Nick Denton, because in secret I want to be him) then I won’t see your responses until I decide to do my daily weekly ego surfing update and see who’s been saying what about me on the internet. Which is when I discovered the above reply to my update on 24 September which read: “Need something to write about - anyone released any new phones recently?”

Without wanting to spoil my amazing joke, something quite big had just happened in the world of mobile phones. Flippant humour tends to be my default communication medium - which isn’t great when you’re trying to negotiate a pay rise, but does at least mean you’ve got a funny story to tell afterwards. Emma sadly didn’t know this, so she missed the joke.

That’s not to say using social media for PR purposes is A Bad Thing fullstop. Take this other example that happened the VERY same day (seriously, you couldn’t make it up!):

This was a direct message on Facebook to an update I wrote about currently being fixated with online video (I am, it’s true). Now, this works for a number of reasons. Firstly, I’ve know Will for years - longer than some of the people I invited to my wedding, in fact. It’s kind of funny - obviously not as funny as my reply, but still pretty good. It acknowledges that it may be overstepping the bounds of our Facebook relationship and finally, it leaves me to reply back if I actually want the info - so it doesn’t feel like spam.

However, this isn’t to say all journos would react the same way - it’s just what works for me. And I quite liked the Bill Gates / Jerry Seinfeld ads and was actively using New Facebook from as early as a I could so, well, your mileage may vary.