Who manages more social media?

Anyone working in PR can tell you about the bombardment of invites in their inboxes for seminars, webinars and conferences for social media and SEO training. This indicates a demand for more education on the topic, and according to these results, it’s paying off.

According to a survey of close to 300 marketing, PR and HR professionals conducted in the spring of this year by iPressroom, Korn/Ferry and the Public Relations Society of America, public relations communicators lead marketers in their management of social media channels:  51%, compared to 40.5% of marketers. The numbers widen for PR in the categories of blogging responsibility (49% vs. 22%), social networking responsibility (48% vs. 27%) and micro-blogging (twittering) responsibility (52% vs. 22%).  Marketing, on the other hand, leads in responsibility for email marketing and SEO.

It will be very interesting to see how the figures will stack up in a few years. My bet is that the numbers will continue to widen in favor of PR. It   makes sense since PR people are used to issuing news and engaging media at the top of the traditional news pyramid. And based on these results, they are successfully adapting and engaging social media, a similar strategy that worked well with traditional media in years past.

At the end of the day, social media is no different than regular media and PR professionals understand this. In order for prospects to take notice, at least three rules of thumb need to happen: 1) the messaging needs to be relevant (prospects need to understand that you understand them); 2) the communication needs to be value-added (don’t just talk for the sake of talking); 3) The headlines need to be attention grabbing.