People Relationships

In my PR guise, I recently pitched some news to the Android PR Gal, who runs the quite informative (well, for Android users at least)  What's Up Android site. I assumed PR Gal was also also a public relations flack..until she informed me that the "PR" in her case stood for "People Relationships."

"I believe there needs to be a new way of doing PR,"  she emailed, "especially within the context and environments of social media platforms. I like to call what I do building 'people relationships,' in order to establish authenticity and connectedness with a brand, service, product, etc."

Well whatever her PR stands for, she's good at it. Because she sure sold me. People Relationships just has a better ring to it than Public Relations.

And Android Gal is sure good at establishing people relationships through all those social media platforms. Besides her site and her blog, she tweets, she's got a YouTube channel, hosts a Facebook fan site and ...well, you name it, she seems to be on it. Just doing a Google search on her is like taking a tour of the expanding social media world.

And it doesn't stop there. While I'm still working on establishing one personal brand, Android PR Gal has at least three of them -- she's also DigitalFemme, not to mention her own real name. Plus, she apparently has a full-time job too!

Of course, Android PR Gal is just an example -- a good one -- of today's new breed of PR practitioner. Because the "public" in PR finally means just that -- thanks to social media, we're increasingly cutting out "media" as the gatekeepers and instead going straight to the "people." And "relationships" is a more precise term than "relations." After, all, PR folk are no longer just trying to relate info that eventually gets to  the public, but to build real links in real time with real people.

So, when the next person asks me what I do for a living, I might not yet be able to say, 'I practice people relationships."  But if I say, "I do PR," I'll be ready with a whole new explanation.