The following is another excerpt from "Five Digital Trends to Watch," an Edelman Digital insights white paper that will be released on February 17.
Companies have done a decent-to-good job adapting to the new era of democratized media. For example, bloggers today are considered an important part of the ecosystem. The best in PR view them as a sounding board that can help shape or even re-shape strategies.
Unfortunately, some of what we’ve learned these last few years may need to be unlearned — or at least modified.
Where once journalists sat on one side, bloggers on the other, today all media is social and all social is media. Yet many, particularly in PR, still treat ordinary citizens, traditional journalism and branded content as distinct islands of media. Going forward, it’s best to see them as a contiguous archipelago.
Consider that in 2008 some 58 percent of newspapers featured some form of user-generated content on their sites, according to the Bivings Group. This is up from just 24 percent in 2007. The mix includes: user-generated photos (58 percent), homegrown video (18 percent) and articles (15 percent). Meanwhile, the number of newspaper sites that are allowing readers to comment on articles has more than doubled to 75 percent.
On the other side of the coin, we've seen time and again that social networks like Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter are now essential sources of news and information for millions. This is particularly true around big events and breaking news.
The upshot is that today it's impossible to draw a line between social media and traditional media - it's all one. We need to take a bird’s-eye view of the entire landscape and conceptualize it in the broadest context when planning, executing and measuring campaigns. Anything short and we're operating in a vacuum.
