At a PR conference a few weeks ago I think I heard the term 'Walking the Walk' a bit too many times. The reference is about PR firms and their social media chops. You know the drill, you have to use the tools yourself to know how to implement them for clients. Tom Foremski recently brought this subject up and there are some good comments on that post.
Let's talk about this a bit more.
Sure it's nice that some agencies and 'consultants' are 'walking the walk' but if your only example of social media experience is your own agency/personal blog, well then...er, sorry.
Let's try running instead of walking, as in what programs have you 'run' for clients?
As Annie pointed out in the comments of Tom's post, most smart folks I know have cut back on blogging, or talk more about personal interests. Longtime colleagues like Phil Gomes, Constantin Basturea and Tom Biro to name a few. My colleague Mike Manuel made a similar observation a few weeks ago. Hell, look at this blog...it's mostly pictures :-)
People can talk all they want at conferences and theorize and strategize, it's the real work that I'm looking for.
An old local friend that's a pretty well-known architect always laments about architecture professors, he says, 'They can talk all they want about theory and design, but most of them have never built anything in their lives....so I just can't trust what they're saying.'
More on this in a bit.
Visitor Comments
I can't wait for the "more" because I'm not quite following you yet. Tonight, we're completing an event-related social media project for a client, but everything we incorporated (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter) we learned by walking-the-walk ourselves, first. Even then, we always learn new thing with every project. ( Here's the project - http://www.nfib.com/summit )
Posted by: Rex Hammock | June 10, 2008 7:10 PM
I definitely agree with you to a point, but these agencies have to start somewhere and blogging or Twittering seems to be a good entry point. As for going to conferences, I still have not managed to get myself to any of the major social media conferences, but I follow all the presenters via their blogs and I seem to pick things up just fine that way. I'm running my first major social media project currently and I'm excited about it. Ultimately though, I've learned more about social media through being active in the blogging and microblogging community than any other way. That's where I find out about the best books to read, bloggers to follow, and case studies to emulate.
Posted by: Lara Kretler | June 11, 2008 7:28 AM
Hi Josh,
I still enjoy blogging and as long as I continue to get a kick out of it I'll keep doing it.
Get your point, though, but blogging's still fun and, to me, my blog is a tool that has and continues to benefit me in my career. Not just on a career level but on a social one too. As one example, if I didn't blog I wouldn't have went to New York to see Youngie and met you, Constantin, Christi and the countless others I met while I was there.
And if I want to be enthusiastic about the benefits of any kind of social media then I feel I've got to be practicing what I preach.
Perhaps 'running the run' (so to speak) is actually using social media tools for both yourself *and* clients?
:-)
Posted by: Stephen Davies | June 11, 2008 10:21 AM
As an in-house PR, marketing, brand guy I understand exactly where you're coming from. From a corporate perspective, you MUST show the value of social media upfront before any time is spent on 'practicing'. As you know, at PitchEngine we're trying to give PR folks a bit more about Real World applications before they jump in. It's not easy to sell many brands on social media when the return on investment isn't as easy to quantify for the higher-ups we answer to. I look forward to hearing more!
Posted by: Jason Kintzler | June 13, 2008 5:24 PM