Joseph Thornley recently blogged his opinion on the importance of a PR agency actually creating social media (blogs, podcasts, etc.) before they can advise their clients on what to do.
In other words, street cred. “Social media authorship is the entry fee for social media credibility ”, Joe writes.
I’m glad Joe blogged about this topic because this is something I’ve personally been struggling with. In particular with my podcasts. How valid is my street cred if I don’t have much ROI (for lack of a better term)?
I haven’t been actively promoting my blog and other social media ventures like I know I should. Reason is I have too many of them on my plate in addition to my day job! I need to hire some staff! But I digress.
I’m more of a think tank
As I pondered, I realize that I’m like a scientist doing experiments (ex: TwitterSpud , Plurk , Improv Comics , the ever-evolving SpudCast ). So what if I don’t have high rss subscription rates or I haven’t enticed all my listeners to regularly send in audio comments? This is my dilemma. I talk the talk and walk the walk but it appears I’m in the echo chamber.
Create with the tools first and see how they fit in context
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. On the other hand, I share the same philosophy as Joe’s PR company:
“And along the way, we’ve played with all the Shiny New Objects. We’ve learned which are simply really neat technology and which have real utility. And we actively participate and generate content in those that we find useful. Twitter, Facebook, Dopplr, del.icio.us and many more.”
Unique ideas for applications will come to you as you first use them yourself. Otherwise, you’re blogging for the sake of blogging, or worse, because someone said so. Or even worse, “making a viral video”.
In Part 2, I’ll illustrate my social media ventures and show you (and you can show me!) where I plan on improving on engagement.