You know I want to like PRSA! I want to support what they do and be proud of being a member but I just can’t do it!! From the local meetings of elders who are unfriendly at the door to the guy (no names) who plans most of the speakers, it is one of the most unfriendly and inflexible groups of people I have ever met…this is “Public Relations?” Crazy!

I have heard many say these kinds of things before. One great speaker who I came to see (kudos for getting a smart well versed PR/Social Media expert) said that he has spoken at thousands of venues around the U.S. (and the world) and that the PRSA members as a whole are lacking zeal, to say the least, in trying to understand how the internet can help them do their jobs better even though social media is a natural extention to what I call traditional PR.

So no news here that PRSA does not comprise creative out of the box thinkers, so why am I writing today? Because of their next speaker, Andrew (first names only), who will be showing up at our local meeting. This is a guy I know well. He claims to love social media and understand it and he was a sponsor of the Business Smart Tools conference where he worked on the website and he was a speaker. Besides the fact that I don’t think he is an ethical person, he has minimal working knowledge of social media but claims to be a “world renown expert” which PRSA is supporting. This is a guy who doesn’t know how to set up blogs for his clients, has no blog of his own, and has a profile on facebook but no friends, no picture and no content….he isn’t even on Linkedin which is barely a social media tool in my mind.

You know that a trend (social media) has made it when “experts” like Andrew are bubbling to the surface and speaking about their “knowledge.” Watch out for people like this but celebrate the fact that the PR industry and business as a whole has a new yet solid communication channel that works for our clients and ourselves!