Comments on Social Media Surfer @ LEWIS Pulse: Why is Social Media Not Public Relations Today?

Travis, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree...

2010-04-19T14:27:56.304-07:00

Travis, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you that the lines between customers and influencers is blurring. I think that many marketing organizations are trying to figure out how to manage the change.

It's only recently that customer testimonials or product "ratings" have such a large reach and immediate publication channel. Previously, the customer didn't have easy access to newspaper or TV station that could publish the customer testimonial, either positive or negative.

Because of the logistical difficulty in getting a customer testimonial, these were traditionally handled manually on a case by case basis.

As the number of testimonials or comments about a product gets into the thousands, companies need to rely on new strategies to deal with large numbers of customers that can easily and quickly publish their own opinions about the products.

It's strange how regimented the departments ar...

2010-04-19T13:51:22.455-07:00

It's strange how regimented the departments are within some of the largest tech vendors. Drawing lines between "consumer" versus "influencer" seems like it must be splitting hairs often (when consumers are influencers and vice-versa).

I've been increasingly learning about how the largest tech vendors often have this white glove list of like 80-100 of their top journalists and influencers, and may divvy that list of targets between 5-10 internal employees, where each is responsible for monitoring their lot very closely and engaging them.

It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out, where third party PR firms and other similar service providers increasingly have very finite / segmented lists that they've been tasked to touch in some form or function. Trite as it is to say, the lines between PR and marketing really seem to be blurring.