Tear down those walls. In today’s social media infused PR & Marketing environment it’s no longer to your benefit to only publish content to your campaign website. No, in fact in today’s iPhone wielding, Twitter, & Facebook obsessed world it’s to your advantage to Syndicate your content to as many platforms as possible.

Such a concept of sharing content used to be a dirty thought, as you wanted to control your content and simply drive audiences directly to your website. However, while that is still true today, the strategy for obtaining and reaching consumers of your content has shifted; and the focus is now on spreading your message as widely as possible and having the audience further disseminate your content and propel new eyeballs in your direction. As audiences become more and more fragmented it is increasingly important to share your content and extend its reach in order to help meet the increased diversity with which content is consumed.

Sharing your content and syndicating it benefits your campaign in a number of innovative ways:

• By increasing the availability of the content, creating more pipes that lead back to your website & allowing you to reach broader audiences.
• Engaged audiences take ownership and will proactively share your news, and spread the message on their own to their own friends and contacts.
• Allows target audiences to opt-in and manage both when & where they interact with your information.

Beyond these aspects, there are other advantages, not the least of which is having the opportunity to syndicate any type of content from the latest news release, to a Podcast interview with your spokesperson, or simply a link to a related article via Twiter. The benefits are endless and will allow you to maximize coverage for your efforts.

Over the past year, as a Nation we have witnessed a financial meltdown, which has been unlike any other series of events that many of us have lived through. Millions have lost jobs, and confidence in the market has eroded. Certainly, it is normal for the market to have fluctuations and for corrections to take place from time to time, but the last year was beyond what anyone including the “experts” had envisioned. The repercussions from these recent events run deep and have impacted millions; leaving many wondering what tomorrow will bring.

As organizations look to the future and to moving forward beyond the financial crisis, and as markets strengthen and projects move forward, perhaps the most important component to the recovery is Communications. I do not write that flippantly, nor because it is the arena in which you or I practice. Instead, in order to get our Nation back to work, and to ease everyone’s concerns we must leverage the opportunities before us in today’s new media landscape to openly and honestly communicate and share the direction that our organizations and clients envision. Whether that means sharing notes and information via today’s social media tools such as Twitter, or Facebook, or doing a periodic Podcast interview with members of the C-Suite, or doing a media tour to promote events and campaigns.

Utilizing these tools affords us the opportunity to share where our organizations (and our client’s) are heading with both internal and external audiences. Further, sharing our message will help to ease people’s fears, and instill confidence in the greater business environment and to our customers.

While the news these days is often about the high unemployment rate and the many negative aspects to today’s economy, despite those headlines, there are millions upon millions of hard working people heading to their jobs every day. They are our colleagues in research and development, customer service, shipping & management and collectively they are doing great things and helping their organizations move forward. As for us, as communicators, PR flacks, & marketers it is our role to shine the light on the positive stories and demonstrate to our communities both locally, domestically, and abroad that we are holding our heads up high and moving the economy forward.

Here’s a video from YouTube about the Social Media Revolution, produced by Erik Qualman of Socialnomics.

More about Eric and his postings can be found at http://www.socialnomics.net

New Media & Social Media tools are the latest options for PR & Marketing professionals, they provide new avenues to reach target audiences and enhance campaigns, however they are only part of the puzzle.  While I am entirely in favor of communicators adopting new tools as part of their campaigns, I think it is most important to do so with a managed and calculated methodology, which utilizes these tools as part of a cohesive overall strategy not just as a haphazard add-on for the sake of using technology.  While these new options can provide enhancements but it is paramount for practitioners to focus on telling their stories without getting caught up in the technology.

Yes, I do advocate as I did recently on this blog that you make your message Platform Agnostic, but I do not think that in doing so you should let the technology get in the way of your goal of telling your story.  Instead, I think you need to tell your story and use technology to accentuate your message and broaden its reach.  Of course, in some situations the technology can improve how you tell your story, enriching the experience for the audience and make the story come to life or bring a level of interactivity, but it shouldn’t entirely dictate or transform how you communicate.

So, the question is how do you communicate with Web 2.0 and Social Media Tools without loosing focus on the primary goal of telling your story.  Certainly, the answers are many and the approach could be quite complex, but on a high-level here are ideas that can lead to success:

1. Define Your Story - Sure, this is nothing new, but it is at he heart of effectively crafting a cohesive approach to new and traditional media tools.  What is it that you’re trying to convey?  Who are your spokespeople?  What is most engaging about your news?  How can you bring value to your audience with the story?  Further, as you figure out how to best position your story think about your audience; how will they relate to your story?  Have you given your story a voice, perhaps personalizing it in some way?
2. Integrate All of Your Strategies - Once you have your story well developed then it is time to think about the avenues through which to tell it and to tie together all of those tactics.  If you are taking a traditional approach of interviews with print, TV, or radio then these should be used as opportunities to communicate about and further deliver the story through the various online components.  Specifically, think about what tools online might enhance your campaign.  For example, online there may be opportunities to engage social media and invite comments and responses from communities such as Facebook, Linked-In, or other niche social networking sites.  Or possibly you can build on traditional methodologies by publishing a Podcast series, which can feature your experts to bring a face and a voice to your campaign.  You might also consider using Twitter to not only promote your story, but to open up a dialogue about those issues involved, and help the audience to become involved and take ownership in the topic.  Essentially, these types of strategies, while utilizing technology will also grow and strengthen the relationship with your target audience and if utilized correctly will keep your story as the focus of attention rather than the tools themselves.
3. Cross Promote Your Efforts - Regardless of the strategies you decide to facilitate - keep in mind the importance of integrating them - making it so that one leads to the other.  Successfully integrated solutions should not only build upon and promote one another, but should help to further educate the audience throughout the process while reading new audiences with each additional venue.  If somebody hears about your story through the print media, or via Twitter then they should be promoted to visit your website to download additional materials and learn more.  The cohesive approach will allow you to communicate in the various ways that today’s segmented audiences get their news and information and to maximize exposure for your particular campaign.

Regardless of the path taken, or the tool used, the bottom line is communications need to think strategically rather than getting caught up in using these new tools just for the sake of technology.  Certainly, thinking in terms of social media and tapping into these venues is an important part of today’s media landscape for business and consumer audiences, but at the end of the day it comes down to using these new tools to tell your story.

The end.