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Using social media is key to effective issues management. I used the recent holiday weekend to labor over long put-off chores around the house. These included tackling that eye-level stack of boxes that contain the paper record my career since 1976. (My grand scheme is to digitize anything of enduring importance and take advantage of my financial adviser's annual Shredder Day at the end of this month.) When I came across my well-worn presentation, How to Manage Issues before They Manage You: the Lifecycle of an Issue, I marveled at the key change that has occurred since the early 90's when I first began delivering this talk: the speed with which issues emerge and turn into full-blown crises. Then, I'd say that an issue can go from emergence to emergency in a matter of months. Today, the same cycle occurs in hours.

It all changed in 1992 when the U.S. government began pulling out of network management and allowed commercial entities to provide Internet access to the rest of us. At one time, corporate executives and managers charged with issues management could build their opinion-leader networks and databases, and prepare their position papers and communication plans in a timeframe that now seems leisurely. Today, that pace would be deadly. When I started delivering that talk, I would shock the audience members into realizing how behind the times they were by describing how I developed the lifecycle of an issue charts in one program and then converted it into another! Those were the days in which executives wrote on yellow legal pads and had secretaries who "typed it up."

Today, while some companies are still struggling with whether or not to blog, micro blogging has eclipsed blogging to become a critical tool in both issues and crisis management, not to mention marketing. While some PR folks are debating over the perfect CEO quote for a good-news release that will start with "We are pleased …," others have come to realize that news releases are fast becoming a search engine optimization tool, not a reliable method for attracting news or blog coverage.

As I say in every presentation to peers of my generation of college-educated communication professionals, we have to break the habit of "writing it up and sending it out" en masse, on paper. Along with the crazy idea that there is such a thing as "the general public" that needs to be "educated," this kind of thinking and behavior and dinosaurs have much in common.

Take a look at the requirements and baked-in assumptions of a PR course at Georgia Southern University. Here's the age-old assignment to interview a professional in the business — "and then write about it at your blog." Or this one, "Creating a profile in LinkedIn is a requirement in my PR Practicum class and is recommended for ALL my PR students." Or read this advice from the Philadelphia Inquirer's OpEd page on how to communicate with college freshman: "warm up your thumbs and start texting." Or ponder the fact that, in May, America's paper of record, the New York Times, appointed a social media editor, whose first acts included a 100-character introductory Tweet. The newspaper's Twitter feed (@nytimes) now was 1.7 million followers.

If you're a professional communicator and you want to provide wise and useful counsel to your employer or clients, you simply can't afford to be heard in public saying any these phrases:

 I just don't get Twitter. Who wants to hear about what people had for lunch?"
"There's no good reason for our organization to have a Facebook page."
"I don't participate in social networks because our IT department has all of that stuff blocked."
"Video, schmideo. YouTube is for stupid pet tricks."

Any organization can be damaged by a poorly managed issue that explodes, in minutes or hours into a full-blown crisis. Don't be caught with your Tweets down.

PR Pros must embrace social media. This blog is a supplement to my June 2009 Update newsletter, which is devoted to social media. Since "old fashioned" E-mail newsletters don't allow the space for much storytelling, I'm telling a few here to make the point that even old dogs like me can learn new tricks and to share some insights into how I learned them.

For example, I have been doing some very intensive research on Web-site structures and optimization recently. In the process, I acquired an analytic tool that allowed me to study several of my own Web sites to learn how I could improve their Google search rankings. I was, frankly, surprised to see how highly the Google search algorithm favors incoming links from social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn and to links with sites like YouTube and Google Video. So I made some very minor changes to the sites including improving my links to and from social networks. In the past month, I've increased traffic to my corporate Web site by 15.18% and to one of my other sites by 34.89%.

Another: On Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, we hosted our best friends for a small gathering, which included the 17 year-old son of one couple. He dutifully appeared and had his burgers but was eager to be with his friends. So mom soon took him home and returned. As we were all engaged in rousing games of Croquet and Dominos, mom silently kept in touch as her son asked permission to change locations through text messages. (Why didn't he just pick up the phone and call? Because kids don't want their peers to know that they're talking to "the 'rents.")

And yet another: last week, I had marked my calendar for 1:00 on May 26, 2009, when the California Supreme Court was to announce its ruling on Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to take away the right of same-sex couples to marry. It was a much anticipated ruling that, sadly, allowed the constitutional amendment to stand while, happily but incomprehensively, also allowed to stand the marriages of the 18,000 same-sex couples who had married after the Supreme Court initially ruled that the majority does not have the right to deny the rights of a minority.

I was hovering over Google News and, shortly after 1:00, read the first reports in national and international press. But then I went to Twitter I was mesmerized by the feed from one guy who was reporting, minute by minute, how street protests in San Jose were forming, how the police were massing in response, how the crowd was reacting and feeling, what they were chanting, what their signs said and what happened when arrests began. The carefully edited and crafted news reports I read conveyed nothing compared with the raw emotion of a guy protesting in the streets for his civil right. Imagine if, twenty years ago, the students massed in Tiananmen Square had the same technology available to them. We'd be remembering a very different set of events.

In my June newsletter, I promised bonus links to more great items about social media. Here they are:

Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Why the FaceBook "Whopper Sacrifice" Was So Murderously Successful

Social Media Can Boost Trust

Social media optimization (SMO) is gaining momentum in SEO Consulting

Most Web Video Is Unwatchable: Follow These PR Best Practices to Make Sure Yours Gets Seen. Seven questions to ask.

Companies are scrambling to silence errant messages while exploiting social networks.

Attention, K-mart (and Sears) shoppers: Your sites are ready.