For PR pros, the rise of social media has led to new opportunities, strategies and—for many—questions. How can PR pros use social media to reach journalists? Should you use it to pitch reporters? What does it take to be successful?
Media-database powerhouse Cision recently published a fascinating infographic, redistributed via PR Daily, revealing the results of its 2013 Social Journalism Study. For the report, Cision asked more than 3,000 journalists worldwide the question: How have your impressions of social media and PR changed in the last year? The answers shed light on how journalists engage social media in their work and the nature of their current relationship with PR.
For instance, journalists disclosed that they overwhelmingly still prefer to be contacted by email (83 percent) rather than by phone (33 percent) or social media (25 percent). Thirty-one percent held a negative view of the effect of social media on journalism, and 20 percent even agreed with the statement: “Social media will lead to the death of professional journalism.”
However, the findings strongly held that journalists do in fact use social media in their work. The majority (55 percent) use it at their job for 1–2 hours per day on average. In particular, 79 percent of journalists use microblogs (such as Twitter) for work in a typical week, and more than half (53 percent) have more than 500 followers on their preferred social media site.
For the most part, journalists also expressed that they would like PR pros to engage with them more through social media than they currently do. This lends to the conclusion that the outlook is generally optimistic for the ongoing relationship between journalists and PR pros in the age of social media.
Check out the full infographic for more intriguing insights:
Compliments of Cision, you can also download the full 2013 Social Journalism Study here.