I was watching this video over on BusinessWeek today. Stephen Baker tapped his connections via social media to come up with a list of four innovators in social media including Beth Kanter, Noah Brier, Scott Monty, and Eric Brown. The group discusses how they use social media and the innovations that they see coming.

Monty hits the nail on the head with the implication that a personal touch is key, if only companies could all get this into their heads.  While his checks come from one of the Big Three, no not the Celtics, but acts in a way previously unseen in the auto industry where everything is cold and fully automated. Brown’s characterization of a Wild Wild West mentality is scary, but is also true. Social media in itself is only as good as it’s contributors.

Working for a large company, we are always hearing: how does this contribute to the business? As a flack its always tough to defend what PR does, especially when not many people realize what a PR team actually does.

Our search team has valued our releases, search enhanced via Marketwire between $2,000 – $5,000, but it is just on an educated guess or hypothesis. Trying to apply publications’ ad rates is equally skewered when looking for results.

So how can one expect to answer the age old question mentioned above? (more…)