What Every Publicist Needs to Know About Social Media….

I spent this past Saturday at a wonderful seminar offered by UCLA Extension entitled “Social Media 101: Podcasts, YouTube, and Blogs–What They Are and How Corporations Can Use Them.”  The class was taught by marketing gurus Beverly Macy and Karl Kasca.  The seminar covered an incredible amount of information from defining what social media is, using YouTube and MySpace as marketing tools, definition of social networks, podcasting and blogging and coroporate Wikis.  I took away a great deal of new information and I have been brainstorming ways to help our clients grow in this area all weekend. I learned what makes up a social media public relations campaign and how important that it is executed in addition to a traditional print and broadcast public relations campaign. With this new wave of social media public relations professionals are really able to go back to basics and relate to the public in their campaigns.  I could write about this topic all day I learned so much…that’s it for now. Here is a great example (that was used during the class) of how David Neeleman, CEO of Jet Blue was able to communicate his message to the patrons of Jet Blue during a crisis using YouTube–Our Promise to you.  You know there is a trend of social media when all of the political canidates are on YouTube and even some fun parodys have come about….HilaryGirl.