Peter Shankman – Help-A-Reporter (HARO) (#13) *

“Social Media is the ability to connect with like-minded people.”

“Twitter is making people better communicators.”

“There is a requirement to stay interesting with visibility that impacts your business.”

“The digital divide is much less prevalent than it once was, but a lot of how [we make progress] will depend on who is the next person in the White House.”

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John Lawlor, host of SocialMedialogy™ Conversations, interviews social media expert Peter Shankman, author of Can We Do That? Outrageous PR Stunts That Work, and founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO), an organization that helps reporters connect with sources. HARO, which started as a simple group on Facebook, has grown, in under five months, into a massive social network of more than to 30,000 members. Each day, HARO sends out 120-150 requests for sources on behalf of reporters. On average, 50-90 responses are received and, according to Lawlor, most of the responses are from top-quality sources. Lawlor used HARO to connect with a source for his very first show. As he explained, it is a network for reporters to “get sourced, get quoted, and get famous.”

Shankman discusses the importance of strategic online visibility in social networking. “There is a requirement to stay interesting,” he contends, “with visibility that impacts your business.” With so many social networks in use today, Shenkman outlines exactly how he uses networks like Facebook and Twitter, among others, to communicate and interact. He believes that the driving force of social networks today is the “mutual beneficial relationship” it creates among people with similar interests. “You have to ask yourself,” he says, “how can you help them and how can they help you?”

Shenkman does not just provide advice for those who are technologically savvy. He explains how a newcomer to social networking can introduce themselves to, and use, popular networks like Facebook and Twitter, which he calls “an emerging technology that is sorely misunderstood.”

In a particularly interesting segment, Lawlor asks Shankman about his view of the next five years and how social media will evolve. Shankman predicts that we will someday have one device “with our entire life streaming on it.” We will have various circles of friends and contacts, and each circle will overlap in various ways depending on life events. Our first circle might be our family and best friends, and a second circle might be “friends in London.” But, if you are taking a trip to London, that particular circle of friends that might have been secondary only a week ago will now be your primary circle for communication. While this might not seem so different than our interaction today, in the future we will have very specifically defined groups, or circles, of people that we interact with in many different ways.

The so-called digital divide, the vast difference in technological ability among the economic classes, is dwindling, according to Shankman, but there is still work to be done. The progress toward more widespread use of social networks, he believes, “will depend on who is the next person in the White House.” One thing is certain, though – social networking has facilitated and improved our communication and the opportunities are virtually limitless.