I had a conversation with a recent graduate I know who is working on a project that involves no small amout of public relations, marketing and promotional work. As you might expect, he gained a lot of traction from the start using social media sites that included Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.
It was amazing to see how creative he was at leveraging the power of the many apps he used, much of which was done on nothing more than his smart phone.
He built a quick following for the project, and then things sort of froze. He had all of these people commenting digitally to him, giving him valuable feedback. His brand was getting out there, but something was missing. The connection wasn’t complete. In spite of the presence of an ecommerce platform, sales weren’t being made.
Then he started getting out in the community, himself, and meeting people face-to-face. He went to events. He networked. He scheduled one-on-one meetings, not only with prospective customers, but also with vendors, suppliers, allied professionals and, for lack of a better term, influencers.
Things changed … for the better.
He recounted all of this to me, and with a look of amazement, he told me of the “importance of meetings” as though the power of face-to-face was something new, saying it was something he had not fully appreciated.
The PR lesson: Don’t underestimate the power of face-to-face communication. It appears to be making a comeback.