Today our series is featuring Carlos Garcia, Social Media Specialist at Lead Image PR, Mexico. GlobalCom PR Network’s partner agency Lead Image provided us with some insights regarding their local PR practices and regional trends.* As with the 0ther interviews in the series, we’re looking at the role of social media as one of tools in a the wider set of PR services employed by the public relations firms and the in-house marketers and try to scope what’s the potentially most recent innovation in PR from Carlos’ perspective.
1. What status do social and digital media have in your daily PR work?
In these cases it is essential to add platforms such as LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Google+ to those already mentioned. Our agency has clearly understood that it’s no longer sufficient to cover traditional media (newspapers, radio and television) but today, multifunctionality is required and the internet is a major factor. Through our database consisting of 1, 300 journalists, among them: section editors, news managers and editors, we release relevant information about our brands, as well as additional material (photo galleries, videos and audios) – all with the purpose of enriching the work of our contacts.
With the objective of learning more about the communication between our consumers and participating in the conversation, Lead Image analyses the information emerging in social networks about our customers, competitors and major topics of interest. Subsequently, Lead Image delivers statistics and data about trends, consumer behaviors and the impacts of PR campaigns to its clients.
We think that social media let us reach out to people more directly, via Twitter and Facebook and an ever-growing array of new platforms. It used to be B2B and B2C but now it’s B2P, with P standing for people. Social media cuts across channels and is all about engaging with individuals, holding conversations not relying on press releases and launches. Thus, social and digital media have a priority in our day-to-day planning with all the customers using social and digital channels.
2. Do you use social networking in your PR and communications work?
It is our everyday work to use social media channels within PR strategies, on the one hand to enhance the communication with editors, influencers and industry experts, and on the other hand to distribute information of our clients via different channels and ideally broad the reach of their campaigns. Through our social media channels, we can detect relevant information, trends and topics in specific markets or conduct research and also help our clients to communicate with their target groups and media partners. We also use social networks internally to communicate and distribute news and strategies.
3. What would you see as most recent innovation in the field of PR?
Product and service development is a key ingredient. By harnessing data, automation and devices we are changing our industry, thereby delivering more immediate, relevant and measurable services. Lead Image VIP –online pressroom- and IPI –image perception intelligence- tools, were developed to give an advantage to our customers with innovative service that will help brands achieve their campaign targets.
We believe in usability and that the tools mentioned above will simplify the handling of personal content, audiovisual formats and communication within the social networks. This way, information will be easier to access for our clients and at the same time, it will be easier to address their target groups. Lead Image understands the importance of social networking and participates actively on them. However, we still consider the principle of Public Relations “direct and face-to-face contact” a key factor in our strategies.
*The series is based on phone or face-to-face interviews and written input, therefore please excuse language mistakes which might reflect foreign language influences.
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