The New York Times on Facebook-Based Media Relations

My post on Facebook’s impact on media relations generated an interesting comment from The New York Times’ Saul Hansell at The Bad Pitch Blog.

To my mind, any pitch on Facebook is automatically a Bad Pitch. Why aren't you using e-mail? If you are really telling me something useful, your e-mail is the most handy way to get it to me and I'll find it.

Using Facebook is an immediate giveaway that you don't really believe in what you are pitching and you need to find some sort of unfair or cute way to attract attention.

While my post and video on Facebook are effusive to say the least, I made it a point to recommend folks DO NOT PITCH VIA FACEBOOK. I want to restate it here if it is unclear in my last post.

However you can learn about journalists and their work via Facebook than the basic details served up by services like Media Map. The same common sense rules about media relations apply on Facebook. It’s not a silver bullet.

Journalists can benefit from giving PR people this access. Some journalists already use Facebook to help them find sources. Now it can help better-informed sources find journalists.

Social Networks and “the F-Word”
Social networks are innocently turning friend into a four-letter word. It’s natural as social networks like Facebook merge from a University-based network to include the general public.

All of my "contacts" on Facebook are professional relationships and I handle them as such. Twitter has already stopped calling contacts friends and now calls them followers. I think the term friend on social networks will fall by the wayside. Whether it does or not, Facebook and other social networks should give users the option of casting themselves in a professional or personal light or limiting access to contacts.

RELATED:
Facebook: What's In It For Journalists? Poynter
He Didn’t Want To Be That Kind of Friend NY Times’ Bits Blog
Facebook Can Improve Your Media Relations The Bad Pitch Blog (includes Hansell’s comment)

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | social networks | Facebook | Saul Hansell

Comments

[Todd Defren]

Great post - you are dead-on that we need to be extra careful when using social networks for PR purposes, and the advice here is appropriate and useful.

[Laura Marshall]

There's a professional (rather than social) network online that nobody talks about yet is quietly gaining strength and popularity--and among journalists. It started out as a tech-y place, but more and more writers, producers, editors, et al are there.

And it isn't for pitching, either. It is for relationship-building, finding contacts and information. The journalist friends I have on LinkedIn stay in touch, use me as a conduit to other experts, ask questions and find new contacts there. Myself, I find it a great place to keep updated on who's where, whose job description has changed, who they know and what they're interested in. And you don't have to post ANY pictures if you don't want to.

Laura