One of the podcasts I listen to is For Immediate Release, an awesome resource of important news in social media. In edition 237, there's a brief mention of a new social media site for PR practictioners -- Ragan Communication's 'myragan.com'.
Myragan.com is in 'beta', and in some places it shows. The Firefox implementation seems a bit funky, with fonts changing as edit posts, and page widths changing as you jump between sections.
That being said, it's also an awesome resource!
First and foremost, it's a social media site for communicators, so there're lots of ways to communicate: Chat, Messages, Forums, Groups, Bulletin Boards.
There's also a Facebook like component where you can invite 'friends' and develop your own loose social network. Though LinkedIn and Facebook do a better job of this.
What I find really cool, is the configurable profile page. This is where you can tell your story, promote yourself and your organization, and really add your own personality to the site, including RSS feeds from your own sites and blogs.
Ok, so why would you add yourself to yet another social media site? Good question, and I'm not sure I really have a good answer yet. Facebook is the 500lb gorilla with a lot of polish on the bells and whistles -- Myragan is a bit rough around the edges yet, as a beta can be.
But what may make this a bit different, is that it's a social media site for a particularly narrow audience - PR types.
To use the walled garden analogy, this is a nice safe place where PR types can hang out with their own, and speak their own language. And that may be enough to keep me here, engaged in yet another social media site.
UPDATE: and do check out the CanComm group to connect with Canadian PR practitioners.
Technorati Tags: Social Media, PR, Communications, blog, facebook
Related posts:
- Social media and the power of influence
- Social Media / Social Networks?
- How to select the right social media network(s)
- Absolutely the best explaination of Social Media — Common Craft delivers, again!
- Avoiding social media burnout by getting organized
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the mention, Brad. We are working out technical details–as you said, this is a beta launch. But with almost no marketing push (and Ragan knows marketing pushes) we’ve got almost 1,200 people signed up in the first week.
We’re all freaking out/happy as hell/excited for a whole new lively and constant conversation with the communicators we serve.
Hi David, thanks for the comment!
Looks like you folks do have a handle on it. I’m looking forward to participating in the development of this cool community.…and yeah, for a beta, grassroots PR is very cool.