This is a guest post by Mike Davies from ITPR.

Social media is a collection of platforms which allows businesses, organisations and individuals to engage with an audience, share content, gain awareness and “be part of conversations”.

If you think that sounds pretty similar – if not the same – to what public relations is all about then you’d be right.

You would also think, then, that public relations would be the natural “owner” of social media campaigning but, as with many other digital shifts, the PR industry as a whole was painfully slow to adapt to the potential of social media.

To fill the vacuum, dedicated social media agencies spawned their very own niche in the market.

Even now, many PR agencies still fail to understand or at least utilise social media in their campaign plans.

This, despite the PRCA’s recent PR and Communications Census finding that Online Communications has increased in importance for PR within the last year, according to 28% of those surveyed.

But with Inbound PR, some agencies are finally realising the potential for their campaigns and for their clients to use social media to reach out directly to prospects, customers and journalists and to increase the impact of their Earned media coverage.

This is a guest post by Mike Davies from ITPR.

Given that 99% of a PRs job is to understand the media and build relationships with journalists, it might sound a bit strange that the practice of “selling in” a story to a journalist can be so nerve wracking.

But this process of pitching stories is often the most daunting task for any new PR exec; and still conjures a few moments of hesitation for the odd seasoned professional.

Anyone who has ever caught a journalist on a bad day will understand why pitching stories can be so nerve wracking. Short replies and quick hang-ups can leave even the most thick-skinned with a feeling of trepidation.

As an ex-journalist, I must confess to understanding some of the frustration felt by my former colleagues.

Like any first in your life, I will never forget the first PR pitch I received as a young journalist that made me question what exactly these public relations people were being paid for.

Not only did the “pitch” start with a generic “hi there”, the story was completely irrelevant to the area I was writing about and had no value to my readers.

Worse still,