Young Professionals need to Develop Credibility and Influence in Social Media

I learn in school constantly about being an active consumer of media and participating in the use of social media by using Facebook, Twitter and blogging about what I am reading and learning that is occurring in the news and in the PR realm. My Professor constantly tells us to be consumers of the media to build credibility for ourselves and show that we are active social media users.

In a recent article I read on ComPRhension, they discussed the importance of knowing social media as a young professional, especially given that many PR professionals now have been thrown social media and are trying to grasps its use and importance for their clients, without having the knowledge of which sites are more popular for their target publics and what social media should be used for.

Yet, the other side is simply this despite young professionals grasp on social media some of the old standard rules still apply, this is that quite simply that you need to develop credibility and influence. Developing this can be as simple as retweeting tweets because it is important to maintain the idea of two-way communication in social media just like within traditional media. According to the article only 1 in every 300 Tweets are retweeted. Now if you look at the number of people on Twitter that number does not seem so bad, but the simple fact is as young professionals we need to make sure that we are engaging and forming those relationships now with credible journalists and media outlets.

It is important to remember just having a lot of followers does not matter it is the content of the information that you are putting out their and who is recognizing that. This is what will get you notice in social media by journalist not your number of followers. In short it is the social media in the PR world use the same concept as with traditional media maintaining credibility and understanding the news will help you develop influence and respect.