Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

For all the complaints about the lack of business blogs in Ireland, a lot of people seem to be overlooking the increasing role that Social Media is playing in Irish society.

I’m still waiting for my iTrip, so I was listening to Spin FM on Friday evening in the car. The two DJs were having a competition to see which of them would get the most profile views on their Bebo pages - the last thing you’d think you would hear on Irish radio on a Friday night! For those unfamiliar with Bebo, it’s effectively the European equivalent of MySpace in terms of popularity. The amount of people I know personally with their own Bebo page astounds me. As much as bloggers want to mock traditional media, they can’t deny that having journalists or DJs praise blogs, podcasts, etc increases their rate of adoption.

You only have to look at the increasing success of Boards.ie, Ireland’s most popular Internet forum, or how many people voted in Ireland’s inaugural Blog awards to see that Social Media is starting to become embedded in Irish society. Obviously this is only really relevant for the country’s youth, but given the fact that most organisations’ attempts at communicating with this audience is concentrated through media relations, I think that more of their efforts should be put into an online communications strategy.

On the other hand though, blog evangelists need to realise that organisations can communicate online using other channels. In much the same way, PR isn’t just about press releases, we also pitch, hold photocalls or hold events instead.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Piaras Kelly, Social Media