Social media is an excellent communications tool and is consistently raved about in public relations circles. Public relations, it could be argued, is still struggling to find a professional niche of its own which is not encroached by marketing. How public relations stands out as being different to marketing is the emphasis on ‘building relationships’ rather than sending out ‘messages’. So how does social media such as Twitter (which is limited to 140 characters) constitute building relationships?
As the above satirical cartoon from the Daily Telegraph indicates there is scepticism that social media communication is entirely vacuous status updates about what you had for breakfast. And so it can be. But it can also be more, as Gini Dietrich indicates in her article. With thought-out strategy and philosophical backing, social media can be the way public relations professionals find their way back to building relationships on a one-to-one basis.
For the most part, social media is one-sided in that organisations send out information and recipients receive it, though don’t necessarily interact with it. The added value of using social media is that the recipient can interact with that message if they want to. They can respond, and then the organisation can reply and so on. This will not happen when someone walks past a billboard and disagrees, or agrees, with the messages they find there. This may be all rather self-explanatory for those who are familiar with social media tools and for these people the question ‘So what?’ might spring to mind.
As many people have been commenting, social media allows public relations practitioners to evaluate their campaigns more effectively, and on a more personal level. Before the utilisation of social media, practitioners relied largely on the behaviour of publics or on the results of surveys, which could be expensive and not always very useful. It is true that, in many ways, social media can be very impersonal and mechanistic. Yet, in the current world we live in it is actually one of the few ways people can interact on a one-to-one basis. This is a busy world and people have less time for one another (I am not speaking from a philosophical point of view about personal relationships but am thinking in business terms…let’s leave that to the Loose Women ladies).
The old models provided by public relations academics such as the Wesley and McLean model where A spoke to B who relayed it to C and feedback looped round again has been completely altered by social media. This video blog by Nisha Kaur Pawar is an interesting look at the utilisation of social media by public relations, including looking at the Obama campaign. The topics discussed are akin to what all public relations students must be discussing. And the more we talk about it, the more we can learn and how better to do it than via social media? Oh yeah...over a coffee, or if we are feeling adventurous a glass of wine.
As the above satirical cartoon from the Daily Telegraph indicates there is scepticism that social media communication is entirely vacuous status updates about what you had for breakfast. And so it can be. But it can also be more, as Gini Dietrich indicates in her article. With thought-out strategy and philosophical backing, social media can be the way public relations professionals find their way back to building relationships on a one-to-one basis.
For the most part, social media is one-sided in that organisations send out information and recipients receive it, though don’t necessarily interact with it. The added value of using social media is that the recipient can interact with that message if they want to. They can respond, and then the organisation can reply and so on. This will not happen when someone walks past a billboard and disagrees, or agrees, with the messages they find there. This may be all rather self-explanatory for those who are familiar with social media tools and for these people the question ‘So what?’ might spring to mind.
As many people have been commenting, social media allows public relations practitioners to evaluate their campaigns more effectively, and on a more personal level. Before the utilisation of social media, practitioners relied largely on the behaviour of publics or on the results of surveys, which could be expensive and not always very useful. It is true that, in many ways, social media can be very impersonal and mechanistic. Yet, in the current world we live in it is actually one of the few ways people can interact on a one-to-one basis. This is a busy world and people have less time for one another (I am not speaking from a philosophical point of view about personal relationships but am thinking in business terms…let’s leave that to the Loose Women ladies).
The old models provided by public relations academics such as the Wesley and McLean model where A spoke to B who relayed it to C and feedback looped round again has been completely altered by social media. This video blog by Nisha Kaur Pawar is an interesting look at the utilisation of social media by public relations, including looking at the Obama campaign. The topics discussed are akin to what all public relations students must be discussing. And the more we talk about it, the more we can learn and how better to do it than via social media? Oh yeah...over a coffee, or if we are feeling adventurous a glass of wine. 
To some extent I agree. Although social media is a powerful tool that can be used to establish relationships, I think it may in some cases detract from relationships.
ReplyDeleteWe are no longer seeing people as much nor hearing their voice for that matter, unless we use a webcam and even that doesn't count.
I think with the huge amount of social media, a person must limit themselves to a specific number of sites. I know I risk sounding like an 80 year old, but if you keep interacting with people online I think on some level you actually lose the skill to talk to people, face to face. Public relations should utilise social media to become established but once that relationship is formed maybe it would be good to meet in person to maintain the relationship.
I agree that becoming completely reliant on social media would no doubt have some worrying consequences on real interpersonal communication. People can spend hours manipulating their online persona, creating the best version of themselves taking hours to write a witty reply in an online conversation... Sometimes the real life person can struggle to keep up!
ReplyDeleteBut back to your main point, I think social media does give organisations & PR practitioners the potential to enter into real discussion with its publics and enable them to evaluate their needs and opinions. Of course, this can often be exploited as well...