When I was the social media intern at National Instruments, my manager Deirdre Walsh taught me most everything I know about social media and community building. Now that I’m a PR professional, I am part of the “virtual social media team” at work. It’s an awesome team to be a part of, and it’s even more awesome that Deirdre was interviewed for this great article in Target Marketing Magazine called “Four best practices to leverage niche social networks for conversions.”
In the article, Deirdre explains how our virtual social media team works, and how your organization can reach out to your community using social media. ”We have built this virtual social media team, where we have representatives from the more traditional marketing functions like direct mail, events, public relations,” Walsh says. “And their role is really twofold: It’s to … work on the … social media projects … [and] to evolve the more traditional marketing functions.”
“For instance, for a conference, members of the NI team will create direct mail pieces that provide information about how to follow updates on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the NI community.”
Do you see? It’s never too late for your organization to evolve! My role in traditional media relations and writing as a part of the PR team is changing so rapidly it’s almost hard to keep up. But by being a member of the virtual social media team I get to work on cool social media projects (like monitoring, metrics, Facebook, blogs, etc.), while also thinking of new ways that PR and social media can work together to reach our community.
If you find yourself stuck in a traditional marketing role, doing things the same way things have always been done, decide within yourself that it is time for your organization to evolve. It’s never too late!
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As you always say, “have a beginners mind.”
And I hope you don’t feel “stuck.”