If I can possibly identify what I love most about social media (the list is very long) I would have to say that it’s the collaborative nature of the whole medium. I like and follow many members of the design and building industry on Facebook and Twitter, and I see this great sense of collaboration every minute – designers showing each other their latest new projects, retweeting a manufacturer’s item about a new/improved or recommended product, praising each other for a well written or thought provoking blog post that would help them in their own design business.
Go back five years. How was this information shared? Was it? Did everyone work in isolation and swap stories a few times a year over cocktails at industry trade shows and conferences? This new model just has to be better.
The public relations profession has never been known for its great ability to share with other PR practitioners, especially if competition was involved. But now, I happily follow and share with other public relations consultants and look forward to giving and hearing about best practices. Can we credit social media and new realities of sharing information? I think so. The GreenEarth PR Network is a shining example of this. Eight PR pros from around North America sharing, learning and collaborating on a daily basis. Yes, we all deal in similar industries and anyone from the outside might look at us individually and think we are competitors. But that’s not the case, and it’s not the way we work. We work together to give our individual clients more knowledge, more experience and more ideas. It’s our own social network that I feel I benefit from professionally and personally every day.
Like the industry that we serve, and the social engagement vehicles that have changed the PR industry forever, we embrace the spirit of collaboration and celebrate the relationships.