PRNewswire webinar on social media

For the past several months, I've been wanting to explore social media in new ways. I was among the first to try Facebook in late 2006 (before most of my 30-something peers were on-board) and this week I've embraced Twitter, Digg and Delicious. Today, I participated in my first webinar on social media, presented by Claire Celsi (whom I'll be following on Twitter within the next few minutes.)

Among the reminders, Claire discussed the fact that like it or not social media is here and PR professionals like myself can either love it or lump it (my words, not hers.) You can either get on board or be left behind. A good social media presence can help to optimize a PR strategy by combining the new media channels with the traditional ones. It gives a PR practitioner a variety of relatively inexpensive tools that he or she can use to develop their public presence and one through which they can follow the opinions of their customers and tell their story in a transparent way.

In order to get good at this it's important to make socail media part of your day, bearing in mind that it mustn't take over your day. Slot in 45 minutes or so to bring yourself up to speed on the climate of the day's social media "opinion" and go from there.

Taking Claire's advice I plan to check out the following sites to learn more about effective blog writing and other issues pertaining to social media and public relations.

alltop.com
alexa.com
hubspot.com
theflack.blogspot.com
drewsmarketingminute.com
blog.holtz.com
chrisbrogan.com
microperstation.com

Best tip learned. To cut down a long and ugly URL (my gosh, I've seen some whoppers) go to linyurl.com and get a tiny URL, a condensed version of the URL and can be used online and in print. Long and ugly URLs be gone. Thank you Tiny URL!