The PR industry is changing for good. Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have completely redefined the paradigm of public relations. A couple of years back, it would have been hard to imagine a micro-blogging service, all of 140 characters messages and that too not landing directly in your Inbox could be used as an effective means for maintaining public relations.

Social Media vs. Public Relations

It might sound surprising but for a long time, social media was viewed as a competitor to conventional PR techniques. While social media analysts predicted that PR industry is now dead, the latter retaliated by arguing that social media isn’t well suited for public relationships. And then, Twitter happened. As its popularity increased, it reduced the gap between social media and PR industry. And now, with thousands of Twitter’s PR success stories, it is widely viewed as the best PR technique in today’s age of Web 2.0

Is Conventional PR Dead?

Of course not! Twitter is a fascinating way of augmenting your organization’s PR capabilities. It’s not a tool to replace conventional PR techniques. Rather, it helps spread the message to a much wider audience than any other legacy PR mode. You can tweet about a press release or about a new media event for your organization and then see how the news spreads like fire in Tweetverse.

Good Customer Service, Great Public Relations

In order to get good publicity, it is important for an organization to provide good service. Twitter provides an unparallel mode of instant & real-time customer service. Queries can be answered instantaneously and the word spreads faster than wild fire.

Many companies have realized that Twitter is not only a great tool for marketing, it’s also an innovative medium of providing great customer service, thereby leading to a good public reputation and strong public relations.

Brand Monitoring

Twitter is a great place to monitor your brand’s reputation online. You get to know what people are talking about your brand. You can search for people who’d potentially be interested in your brand and reach out to them. Using Twitter’s advanced search functionality and several 3^rd party tools, you can determine if your brand is loosing its charm amongst customers and appropriately take corrective action.

Knowledge is Power

The PR industry thrives on knowledge and what better than an easily presentable source of vast knowledge like Twitter. As you follow and interact with more people, you gain more knowledge. Be it peers, competitors or clients, following them on Twitter makes sense as you gain more insights into their opinions.

Twitter is an always online 24 x 7 community with several knowledgeable and thoughtful people, so why not make the best out of it? As a wise man once said, there’s nothing better than learning from the pros.

Bill Gates once said “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relationships”. I’d rather say “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it accessing Twitter to build public relations”