Amanda blogging at the IABC 2010 World Conference in Toronto

Three hours into a 32 hour round-trip to this year’s IABC conference in Toronto I’m already inspired – and I haven’t even landed in Toronto yet!

As I flick through the May edition of CW, IABC’s international magazine for communications/PR practitioners, several stories suggest that social media has fundamentally changed the role of communications practitioners. I’ve heard it bandied about in Wellington too. 

I’m not convinced.

Fundamentally our role is still the same - to build and protect our clients’ reputation by ensuring their messages are heard and understood. Social media has made that more difficult than ever before.

It’s created a proliferation of conversations and empowered consumers. As a result, PR practitioners must participate in (but not control) those conversations. And we must respond faster – it’s now minutes not an hour or two to get the message right. 

The BP crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. The impact of social media has been considerable and made the job of managing reputation much more difficult: Twitter provides ‘news’ faster than the news media, while Facebook and Bebo have enabled consumers to band together against BP despite their geographic distance. 

The role of BP’s communications practitioners hasn’t changed as a result of social media. Protecting BP’s share price (through reputation) remains their brief.

What has changed is how quickly they respond. It’s no longer sufficient to communicate every hour – it’s now essential to communicate almost every minute.

The challenge for BP with the advent of social media will be maintaining their stamina and perspective in such a busy, complex environment. Failure to do so could result in a failure to protect reputation. 

And the ultimate downfall of BP’s reputation won’t be social media or even the ability of its crisis PR team to manage its reputation. Its downfall will be a failure stem the leak.