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Michael O’Connor Clarke, a long-time friend of Suw who I only recently had the pleasure of meeting, provided a virtual introduction to Peter Shankman. Peter was on a whirlwind trip to London and wanted to meet some people to talk about social media. Peter wants to help PR and journalists have a better working relationship in the age of blogging, vlogging, Twittering and social networks.

We walked down the road from The Guardian to St Paul’s Cathedral, and Peter pulled out his Flip video camera. He asked me about where to get some lunch, the differences between social media in the US and Europe (and lots of differences between European countries) and cats. Well, the conversation veered off onto cats largely because of Suw’s (I have only written one post) side project, Kits and Mortar. I think Suw and I should start keeping a blog list of most irrelevant PR pitches we get by way of Kits and Mortar.

And as I mention in the chat with Peter, ‘social media press releases’ need to be more than a normal press release done with an old school mail merge from a list of bloggers. Social media is personal media, and if you spend just a few seconds finding a post that somehow relates to your product, you’re going to be more successful. Peter also caught up with video blogging David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe so he got both the journalist’s view and a PR view during his visit to London.

I had a fun time chatting with Peter. But hey man, you said I wascorn fed? Just checked on that definition: “large and often muscular, but lacking in intelligence, refinement or sophistication”. Am I really that muscular?

Technorati Tags: social media