Today I interviewed a job applicant who had recently completed a stint at a well-known financial public relations company. I asked whether she had used any tools to understand online conversations. To my astonishment she said that not only was this not the case, but that the PR company in question actually banned their employees from using Facebook.

A new survey bears out that banning social media applications is pretty common amongst UK employers. Comprehensible behaviour for some businesses maybe, but for a PR business whose major interest is in communication, in creating links between people, in understanding opinions and trying to shape them, this is strange behaviour indeed. Understanding Facebook, and applications like it, is a key part of the public relations function as it should exist in businesses today. PR practices that don’t engage with these media will find over time that they are addressing a smaller and smaller part of the market.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.