You’ve just wrapped up a successful PR campaign and generated numerous stories across national, regional and trade media. Your client is pumped up as you deliver the culmination of your program in the form of a massive clip report. Everyone is happy…right?

I’ve constantly been agitated by the PR industry (for which I’m a part of) and our inability to tie into the most important aspect of our profession – validating the client’s that we serve. There are many different ways for us to measure the effectiveness of our programs. In fact, Katie Paine, founder of KDPaine & Partners is probably one of the very best at designing the measurement programs in our industry. However, I’m not talking about measurement; I’m talking about educating companies about how to effectively “merchandise” these media placements throughout their organization directly to their targeted audiences. Validating their business by hand-delivering such media coverage to these targeted audiences.

Here are just a few of the things you can do to make your PR program an internal success that will have the entire organization (and targeted audiences) singing your praises:

• A Reason to Call or Email - How many times do sales teams bitch and complain about having to make cold calls or never having anything new to take to their clients or prospects? Now they do as a result of your media coverage. Draft a number of communications tools including emails, speaking points, etc. that anyone in your organization can take to their respective audiences directly relating to these stories. They now have a great reason to connect that isn’t self serving or traditional.
• Encourage You Organization to Leverage Social Media – Too many times we hear about companies looking to put restrictions in place for their employees on social media. Bad idea. Instead, encourage and arm your employees with the links, Tweets, and summarized posts about the media coverage on their personal profiles. Besides any employee should be excited about their company being featured in the media.
• Wear it on your Sleeve – Okay, not literally but employees should be proud of such coverage and should let others know via their email signature, on their website, marketing materials, business cards, etc. Everyone appreciates being featured in the media and besides, it will certainly be a great conversation starter.

I could go on and on but would love to hear what you’re doing to “merchandise” your stories. This has become a standard practice for my firm and I hope others will catch on and not move on once the results come in but instead let the games (and outreach) begin!

I continue to be amazed at all of the interactions being had on Twitter with traditional/social media professionals and others. In fact, today’s announcement by Cision introducing their new service called JournalistTweets followed by another amazing conversation tonight on #journchat made me think about something…

Is Twitter becoming a new media platform itself?

I say this for many reasons…not just because of the Twitter hype we’re experiencing today. Let me try and explain with these 3 points:

1 – The News Push – I’ve been able to replace all of my RSS news feeds because most of the major news outlets I traditionally follow are broadcasting their news via Twitter (i.e., here is an amazing list compiled by Sarah Evans – MediaOnTwitter).

2 – The Micro Blog – Most media (journalists and bloggers) are using Twitter to market their stories or blogs to others. Granted, they are only using Twitter to supplement their “story marketing” but there is no doubt that the traffic being created by these tactics are growing rapidly.

3 – The “Conversation” – This is the biggest reason (and most powerful weapon of Twitter) I am so bold to make a statement that this is becoming it’s own media platform – like TV, radio, print, etc. On Twitter journalists are conversing with mass audiences (not just PR/Communications professionals), tapping into general interest and niche expertise alike.  In the same right, these casual conversations are becoming news themselves.

Am I going on a limb here? Perhaps drinking too much Twitter Kool-Aid? Or do you too believe that Twitter has morphed into so much more than just another social media or networking platform. Talk with me!

Back in February I wrote a post entitled Is it Too Late for Traditional Newspapers? – Like many, I believe innovation and adoption of social media and online components will be the downfall of these traditional newspapers.

Today many people continue to ask me why we are now playing in the “social media” space when our firm has been focused on traditional media relations. I always think I have a good answer for such a question, “because as traditional media evolves, organizations will have the unique ability to reach their targeted audiences without using the media as their mouthpiece.” I’ve since realized that this response fails to answer the full picture about why we are involved with social media – because many of these traditional journalists are also playing in this space.

Many others have recently weighed in on this topic including the story yesterday by @woodylewis on Mashable (@mashable) entitled, “5 Ways Traditional Media is Going Social.”

What I like most about Woody’s story is how he talks about the successful approach that John Byrne (@johnabyrne), editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek Online has had leveraging his Twitter profile. In fact, his post “What’s Your News Story Idea” John gives readers a chance to share and submit their story ideas to John and a number of other BusinessWeek editors. This looks great on the surface, but from what I’ve seen, John is truly delivering on this promise since April…2008!

Another great example of the traditional media’s use of social media would be the wiki that PR & social media expert Sarah Evans (@PRSarahEvans) put together called MediaOnTwitter listing out all of the journalists and media outlets currently on Twitter. I love this list and often forward to any PR or marketing colleague who doubts why they should be using Twitter. Not to be pitching per se as John suggests, but to be interacting with these influential journalists and to be reading their respective outlets.

What are some examples you’ve seen of traditional and social media blending together? And to Woody’s point, do you believe his closing comments, “When the economy recovers, those brands that have survived by innovating should benefit from the social media tools they’ve put in place.”? I do.