Conversational patterns of PR

What kind of conversational patterns can you expect to encounter using social media as a PR professional? What will consumers of your content expect? How can you level these expectations?

The conversational patterns that we may encounter as PR professionals will vary depending on the size of the audience. As the audience grows in size it becomes more and more difficult for a writer to hold conversations with all of their readers. If we as PR professionals are to gain attention, we will be forced into a width-versus-depth trade-off. This means essentially the writer can either spend less time talking to everyone which gives the impression that the writer is shallow OR they can limit themselves to have deep conversations with less people giving the impression they are cliquish. As a PR professional I think we will encounter both types of conversations.

The consumer will generally expect us to have in depth conversations and dialogue with them. Unfortunately, if working for a large corporation this is not very likely. At any rate, PR professionals have to find balance when possible. One possible solution is to arrange the consumers into similar groups. This way the PR practitioner can give an in depth response to groups of consumers concerned with the same issues. Another solution may be to give in depth responses to those with the largest social networks and allow the information to flow through them.