A 20-something's Perspective

This thing called the internet has turned our world upside down. In the course of a few years people have changed the way the work, shop and communicate. In this same amount of time businesses and PR professionals have been very slow to using this new technology and understand it.

Some people are still trying to convince companies to blog! As far as social media is concerned blogging is dinosaur. This is not to say that blogging isn't a useful tool. I'm doing it right now, but it is sad that our industry has been so slow to jump on this bandwagon. It is equally as sad that clients have been less than enthusiastic about these new tools.

Maybe it's the generation gap? Old people run the businesses and old people don't "get" new technology. How are PR professionals supposed to recommend new online tactics if they don't even know what they are? If they don't use them?

If this is the case why not appoint a millenial as your new Director of Social Media or Social Media Manager? Make it their job to investigate all these new tools and explain to you and your clients how they can be used and to what benefit.

If the generation gap is not the problem I urge you to find out what is. Everyone knows that social media is important. We owe it to ourselves, our profession and our clients to learn about it and use it correctly. Creating a Facebook group will not be right for everyone and it's our job to know that.

As the younger generation continues to enter the workforce they will want to be engaged on this level. I predict that PR agencies that do not use social media will not only fall behind and recieve less business but will also lose talent. I am happy that my agency is starting to embrace social media. In all honesty, if they didn't I probably wouldn't stick around long.