By Chris Lee

February 1-5 2010 is ‘Social Media Week’ and sees a number of conferences taking place in some of the most advanced digital cities; London, New York, Berlin, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paulo. It aims to help spread best practice in social media and bring professionals together to learn from each other.

Social media has a particular impact on the public relations (PR) industry, under whose remit corporate social media usually falls. For Stephen Waddington, managing director of technology PR agency Speed Communications, “every week is social media week”, but he believes that this week provides a great opportunity for companies to share corporate, public sector and not-for-profit social media practice.

“Social media isn't a fundamental change in how people communicate but it is a fundamental change for business. The broadcast model no longer works and businesses must engage directly with their audiences. That’s difficult,” Waddington told NMK.

“PR agencies have three approaches to social media: either creating a team to focus exclusively on digital comms or hiring a high profile individual or small team to parachute into client assignments where there is a social media component,” he added. “The third approach that Speed has adopted is to build skills throughout the organisation. If you work in the PR industry and want to continue working in the industry you need to equip yourself with digital skills.”

Unsocial Media?

According to Jon Silk, senior digital consultant at PR firm Waggener Edstrom, social media is at the forefront of brands’ minds in 2010, which has in turn led to a spate of digital agency launches recently.

“Online PR has grown beyond something one type of pro could handle - it now represents multiple
subsections like analysis, influence and content,” Silk said.

Silk also believes that there are arguably too many social media events in the digital calendar, a viewpoint given some weight by the number of social media consultants tweeting and blogging that they were “too busy doing social media” to attend events.

“Hopefully [Social Media Week] will push some thinking forward by allowing agency pros to get together, discuss and learn from each other. With so many social media events happening throughout the year, however, I'm worried that people won't get involved as much. We've just come out of a frantic event season and I know I'm not the only one suffering from tweetup fatigue,” Silk concluded.

A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action

Vikki Chowney, editor of Reputation Online, agrees that Social Media Week has run the risk of becoming saturated with events and what is really important is social media in action.

“From a brand perspective, there is a risk that some may just jump of the bandwagon. [Social media news site] Mashable sponsors pretty much everything going nowadays, so seeing that name on the list doesn’t mean a lot anymore,” Chowney said. “It has kicked off a rather emotive debate, but as it stands, almost half [of respondents on Reputation Online] have said that the week will benefit the industry as a whole. The general consensus, however, is that there must be more doing and less talking.”