According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations: ‘Social media’ is the term commonly given to websites and online tools which allow users to interact with each other in some way – by sharing information, opinions, knowledge and interests. As the name implies, social media involves the building of communities or networks, encouraging participation and engagement.

Social media is particularly useful for PR practitioners because of PR’s focus on relationships and communications between people. Social media was basically created because of people’s desires to get closer to one another, and more involved in different aspects of one another’s lives. Social media allows creation of distinct communities.

Public relations practitioners can use social media to examine communities, which may also be categorized as target audiences. They can study similarities of people in these social media groups. Joseph Thornley expands on these ideas in his blog.

Some different types of social media are: blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg and Slideshare. An interesting social media website I came across strictly for PR practitioners is myragan.com.

Social media is definitely the next big thing for PR practitioners. Those who don’t choose to learn about it and use it to benefit their practice will certainly be putting themselves at a disadvantage in the profession.