Update: The Ragan.com article reference in this post is now online

Over on Facebook, Peter Shankman has started a group titled, “If I Can Help A Reporter, I Will.” The idea is pretty simple. A reporter in need of an expert for a quote or some background can reach out through the group, and members get notified via Facebook messaging (which also hits their email inbox).

I was subscribed for a while but left the group because of the flood of queries that had nothing to do with my area of expertise. Talk about overload!

But the idea is still a good one, an informal approach to what PR Newswire’s Profnet, a long-standing tool that lets journalists send out similar queries to companies that subscribe. ProfNet provides those companies with the opportunity to identify stories about their business and then get some earned media by responding and, with luck, getting an interview that makes it into the story.

Social media is making this even easier than ProfNet or even Shankman’s group. Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications, shared with me an example. (Disclosure: I do fee-based work for Ragan Communications.) Mark wanted to run a story on the company’s website about WalMart’s reversal of its decision to collect money an injured employee received from a lawsuit.

(You’ve probably read about this, but the employee was seriously hurt when her car was hit by a truck, losing short-term memory and confining her to a medical facility. WalMart’s benefits paid the employee, who also sued the trucking company. WalMart’s benefits policy is not unique by any stretch of the imagination: You can’t get paid twice—by WalMart and somebody else—for the same injury. So when the employee collected a judgment, WalMart took it, since they had already paid out on the employee’s claim. Yesterday, however, WalMart revised its medical benefit policies to allow the employee to keep the money she collected.)

In search of some commentary for his article, Mark—a former Washington, D.C.-based journalist—didn’t turn to ProfNet or even Shankman’s Facebook group. Both would have taken too much time. He put a question out, instead, through LinkedIn’s “Answers” feature.

The answers he got back were thoughtful and came from people, in some cases, any journalist would be happy to quote. There was, for example, the owner of a company, the general counsel for a hospital, and a human resources consultant. And the answers came back fast, all of them within an hour of Mark’s submission of the question.

When I told Mark I planned to blog about LinkedIn’s usefulness to journalists (or anybody else researching a story), he wrote back:

Linked In is a reporter’s dream. As a journalist, I can put a network of dream sources together. Then, when I’m facing a breaking story, I can post a question, ask for expert comment and then weave those comments into my story. And what makes Linked In a gold mine for reporters is that you can choose a category of expertise based on the story you are writing and post that question to those members as well as your connections. All of this can be done in a matter of minutes.

I got my first comment minutes after I posted the question. I also received comments from experts I never would have known—lawyers, HR professional and PR experts.

Finally, you can quickly scan the members’ profile to see what experience that person has, then mention it in your story. It gives your piece more credibility.”

Linked in is ProfNet on steroids. And it’s free.

And yet there are businesses that block LinkedIn and other tools that provide companies with the opportunity to get ink or find resources. I just read this morning, in a Globe and Mail article, about a company that blocked Facebook because “I just couldn’t find any business use” for it. The business uses are there. You just have to think (sorry) outside the box in order to find them.

Like Mark did.