Lately, I’ve been giving you tips on playing nice with reporters. Media relations is important, don’t get me wrong; but here’s the major problem with basing your PR and marketing plan solely on getting media: You never know when or even if a story about you or your restaurant is going to run.

You might send a brilliant media release, provide follow-up background information, sit through a 90-minute interview and two-hour photo shoot. The writer might tell you the month, week, even the exact day the story will run. All of these things may happen in quick succession, puffing you up with pride, sending you to the moon with anticipation.

And then when the story doesn’t run — when the editor tells the reporter they had to cut eight pages from the magazine this month because ad sales were down, or when the magazine folds, or when you get bumped to the month after your big event — oh, how fast and hard the fall can be.

Media is uncertain, which makes it an unstable foundation for your marketing plan. What’s more solid? For starters, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social media tools that allow you to go straight to your audience — no waiting for the story to run, no ad quotas to ruin your moment in the spotlight.

When you use social media, the story runs when you press “Send,” “Publish,” or “Update.” I like those odds a lot better, and I think they make the case for a multifaceted marketing approach that puts media in its proper place.