It seems as though every time we turn around a new piece of technology or tool pops up that can be used to make our Digital PR and social media activity easier and more effective.
Tablets are changing the way people do business and the front runner by leaps and bounds is the iPad. It’s become commonplace to see tablets in meetings and they certianly are a boon for Digital PR/social media practitioners.
Steve Jobs surprised everyone by showing up to announce the launch of his newest marvel – a sliver thin, lightning fast iPad that can practically put you to bed and sing you a lullaby. The audience showed their delight with a standing ovation.
For Digital PR people like us, who spend practically every waking moment online, a tablet like the iPad makes perfect sense. The problem with a SmartPhone is it is too small to really utilize the apps you need to execute your Digital PR and online business activities. If you struggle with ‘predict text’ and the tiny touch screen qwerty keyboard, try a tablet – those problems magically disappear. Try tweeting from a conference on a smart phone and then do it on an iPad -no contest.
You can instantly connect online and tap into what is going on – in real time. Running several apps at once allows you to stay in touch with your customers and your community on a variety of social networks while you check your news and monitor blog posts. The iPad now has a camera on the front and the back, so capturing and sharing images is simple and quick. Video facetime and virtual meetings are around the corner. Now you can carry just one device instead of three or four.
The benefit of the blazing fast download speed and the added benefit of being able to create your own hotspot for other devices to use is going to change the way mobile digital PR is done. PR has always been a fastpaced environment, but for the first time it really IS a 24/7 gig. You NEVER know when someone is going to tweet something about a client or when a newsworthy hook may present itself. So as the scoutmaster used to say : Be prepared; and today that means having a device like the iPad with you at all times.
If you are familiar with the old style of PR, you know that deadlines were a different animal, and relationships with media were built very differently. You only had a window into a journalist’s life through a column or perhaps a meeting. Now you have the opportunity to actually communicate with influencers in every community you can imagine.
Old style PR relied on relationships too, but with social sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even HARO, you can made a deeper connection and discover what they’re working on and what info they’re looking for. It is possible to get a real understanding of that person’s life and, by extension, offer more value in your pitches. Using the mobility of the iPad and tapping into the apps available make the Digital PR job easier as your research is right there in front of you. We are witnessing the dawn of a new age for communication and business.
At PRESSfeed we’ve found the iPad to be a very useful tool – we take one to all meetings and conferences and use it to demo the social media newsroom. It’s super light and its ease of use and touch screen zoom make it the perfect tool for us.
And the new iPad has a HDMi link so you can link to a giant flatscreen too! So thanks to Steve Jobs for another step along the path to better Digital PR practice.
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Image credit: Anthony Quintano Flickr
This entry was posted on Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 9:41 am and is filed under Digital PR News. 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.
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