I attended the MDs meeting today of the Public Relations Consultants’ Association (PRCA) of which I am a board member.

Krishna De gave an excellent presentation to an audience of Managing Directors of leading Irish PR consultancies. She ran through the usual social media tools including blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. She has some good content on her website with regard to blogger engagement here

For those dipping their toes into social media she suggested to start off by listening to online conversations.

She shared some interesting data that in the US for Fortune 100 companies Twitter is their preferred social media platform. According to some recent research by O2 only 6% of Irish SMEs are blogging (this stands at 37% in the US).

Measurement was, as usual, a tricky issue to be clear on, but her conclusion that social media coverage greatly helps SEO was well made.

Boards.ie is now the fifth biggest website in Ireland and she gave some great advice on how to engage with it.

Just like in traditional media many of the case studies she referenced had a big prize hook to achieve engagement.

She also talked about how important it is to be ready for a social media crisis – referencing the Dominos debacle

With Facebook boasting one million members in Ireland and Linked In standing at 150,000 social media cannot be ignored by PR agencies.

At Elevate we feel that social media is a really important avenue for coverage for our clients. We are loving our social media platforms including this blog, our ezine, Twitter, Facebook and Linked In

There is a land grab for online PR amongst marketing and PR agencies. It is progressive PR agencies that can provide compelling content for social media platforms. What an exciting time to work in PR!