The advent of social media has created a drastic shift in corporate communication. The most intriguing aspect of public relations is that it can be applied anywhere, on any platform.
As companies try to keep up with the vast switch from traditional to digital and mobile communication, they are going to need experts who know how to get their message across most effectively.
PR practitioners are the masters of communication. Regardless of which medium is used, an effective PR professional has to be able to clearly distribute the client’s message and keep its target publics in mind. From news to politics, to sports and entertainment, there seems to be a growing demand for communication professionals.
Social media encompass all facets of communication (writing, speaking and listening) and in some magnitude; most major media corporations have taken part in it. As an aspiring PR professional, I value the art and science of communication and one day I hope to master it.
The challenging part of PR and social media is finding a niche, target audience and proper medium to disseminate an intended message. Twitter, facebook, skype, fring, mashable, youtube and howcast are terrific mediums to obtaining information; but each medium has its own advantages. However, the challenge is determining which platform to use when broadcasting information.
Newspaper articles that were once printed on hard copy are now tweeted to phones and mobile devices. Newscasts that used to be aired on television are now uploaded to the web for instant access. The public expects to receive information more quickly as a result; which in turn, increases the demand for social media.
News corporations are at the forefront of this push for social media and the public is receiving information from a variety of different sources. The masters of the social media epidemic are the ones who can use all their platforms and essentially communicate to anyone, about any topic, on any forum.
ESPN is a terrific example of a brand that knows exactly what effective communication entails.
ESPN recruiters spoke to our Research and Strategies class about career opportunities and they informed students about what their company is doing to stay ahead of the social media curve.
ESPN showed students that social media are not limited to facebook and twitter. Every message has to have an audience and the people at ESPN have conceived several innovative tactics that can be applied to any company with a message.
For example, ESPN has specific, local websites for fans to keep up with the action from their favorite teams. Websites such as espndeportes.com, espnchicago.com and espndallas.com provide their subscribers with filtered information that solely pertains to what the readers want to hear about.
Narrowing an intended audience is great strategy that the folks at ESPN use, and other companies should follow suit. Social media are all around us, but it is up to us to learn how to master it and optimize its capabilities.
Cameron,
ReplyDeleteTo think that social media has evolved into a way of life is crazy to me. One thing that scares me is; I'm old school. Yes, I'm familiar with various social media as everyone in our generation is but I don't spend my time figuring out how all these online communities work. I would much rather talk to someone face-to-face or at least on the phone and I feel like for that I could fall behind in the PR field. What happened to the days where we would have in office meetings? At my last internship, everything was done via e-mail, and I never meet half the people I worked with. How frustrating...
-Shari Baron
I totally agree Shari. Social media is a great way to stay connected with associates, but it does lack the advantages that you find in traditional communication, or face-to-face communication. I deleted my Facebook page this summer, and reactivated it once school started because I didn’t want to fall behind in the ever-changing world of social media. Also, I have recently joined the twitter nation. However I am not an avid status updater, but after my PR Methods course this summer I realized how essential social media is to public relations. It helps companies reach an audience that they may have never reached.
ReplyDeleteCameron,
ReplyDeleteThere are those who embrace social media and there are those who are skeptical about its existence. Nevertheless, I believe that social media is here to stay and isn’t going anywhere any time soon. I believe that when it comes to choosing how we want to communicate with others we base it off priority. If someone or something isn’t a priority we may choose to use a lesser approach such as; a text message, a Facebook message or simply tweet them. When we want to communicate with others we have a choice in how we go about doing so. I believe that social media has made communication more hypocritical. On my last job my supervisor picked and choose which emails she wanted to respond to and it became very frustrating. At times I love not having to have face-to-face communication and at others and I can’t it.
Cierra Jackson
Cameron,
ReplyDeleteYou have hit the nail on the head. I agree that social media is an arena companies cannot help but to be a part of, but the challenge is indeed surfacing the message of your organization in a whirlpool of other messages, or at least gaining a share of the discussion. It is very important that as budding PR professionals at this time we not only know how to do PR and carry out certain strategies and tactics, but we must be knowledgeable enough to recommend why we should do these things and identify which medium is the right one to use. With following the new rules of PR, I cannot instantly say let's send out a press release for this activity just because it is one of the oldest PR tactics. I must find ways that will actually reach my key public and increase my organization's bottom line with one swoop. When we have mastered that ability, then we have mastered public relations.