2011 will be the year that PR pros have to get serious about social media, writes Ari Adler at Ragan.com.

It will be the year that PR pros are expected to deal with social media metrics rather than just using Twitter and Facebook.

“You can’t simply report the data anymore; you need to be able to dig into it, understand it and translate it for the client or organization,” Arik Hanson, principal of ACH Communications in Minneapolis, told Adler. Plus, as other PR pros pointed out, social media numbers may be plateauing—”Fans and followers are becoming harder to find, and online social spaces are developing more niches,” communications coordinator Angela Minicuci told Adler.

Which means that much harder of a hustle to get those fan numbers up.

Zoos and aquariums are adopting social media, and fast, reports Ari Adler at ragan.com. So if you want to, er, “join the online jungle” and Tweet for parrots…never mind that they squawk rather than “tweet…” or just be the online rep of Happy the Hippo or Mei Xiang the panda, better hurry: two thirds of the 221 members of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums are already using social media, and that number is growing all the time.

The Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Mich., loves their social media wiz, who’s gotten locals to rediscover the zoo, sent out photos of newborn animals before the mainstream media, and do all sorts of other interactivey things that social media practitioners are always going on about.

But the point is, only so many people can update Kevin Bacon the pig’s facebook page, and maybe that person is gonna be you.

photo: pelican