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@David- Thanks for your response! I see your point on the larger companies not being able to outsource. In that case, I do maintain that PR firms, advertising firms and marketing firms all serve different purposes in the world of social media, just as they do in traditional media. Whether they are outsourced or not, each function can and should work together, each pulling the weight in a different area of service. So, for the larger companies, (to dumb it down a bit) advertisers should do the graphic work, marketers can do the securing of pages and media buying and the PR people can produce the content and do the media placement work. And I also maintain that in those cases, a PR firm, adept in social media, should be on board for damage control or (as @Karen put it) techniques for avoiding damage control. At least, that is the way I see it through my rose colored junior staffer glasses. :)

Look, I understand the argument. I don't understand, however, what cave some people live in, where they would need more than one communications firm these days. Warning: the following comments are subject to partiality: Seriously, I'm a PR chick; if need be, my firm gets graphic designers to do the visual logo and layouts. Sometimes we get a production guy to do the video work. (Many of us are adept at video, audio, and graphic design and editing ourselves). But we always do the research behind our madness and produce all the target messages and content ourselves. Furthermore, we put it in all the deliverable formats. We can cover advertising on Facebook and YouTube and buying search engine ranking via Google AdWords. We can absolutely cover the bloggers and news media. And (again) we can cover the content used in these various social media outlets. I can write intermediate HTML, and if I need more help, I can call an IT guy. So, it’s not like creating social media press releases or understanding how to post links and visual media content is beyond me. Certainly managing a blog or providing ready-made content for bloggers is pretty feasible for us as well. My suspicion is that we “junior staffers" (I've been working in the industry for a little over 3 years), PR and marketing alike, pretty much get all the different aspects. And we certainly know how to find blogs like David's to keep ourselves fine tuned. :) Just because we are the ones behind the methods, doesn’t mean the partners aren’t overseeing the content. What marketing and advertising doesn’t do, however, is damage control. That for me is the kicker. There is a lot of potential to realize in social media, but there is plenty of potential for negative impact too. So, why not hire a PR firm, who will most likely turn to ad guys for specific aspects of getting the job done? You probably won’t even realize you worked with more than one company, and I guarantee that letting the PR firm pay the ad guys from their own budget will be easier on your wallet as well.