These days everybody is talking about social media and its effect on society. It seems that everything we do now is linked to social media and this is, in a way, true. Social media is affecting our daily life and decisions in a manner that has exceeded all predictions.
Businesses have also become aware of the importance of social media and have now incorporated it to its communication channels and Public Relations plays an important role as far as the use of social media in a company is concerned.
The use of social media by corporates started mainly with a marketing purpose in mind but now, they have realised that the use of social media with public relations purposes can benefit the company in an incredible way.
Public Relations has a huge amount of social media tools at its disposal. These tools can be used to build and promote brand reputation, raise awareness, target a wider audience, interact with them and enable a two-way communication, communicate specific messages to desired stakeholders and receive suggestions from them. These are just some examples of the benefits of social media for a corporate communications use.
With platforms such as Facebook companies can create fan pages with which they can form a community and interact with it. This way they can inform their audiences more directly as well as listen to their personal opinions. The same happens with Twitter, although it offers the advantage that the message is spread quicker to a wider audience. With YouTube, for instance, the CEO can communicate a message to the company's stakeholders or viral videos can be posted with the purpose of raising awareness; and Linkedin, for example, can help companies to find new employees.
Letting the message outside and allowing interaction also implies the possibility of receiving criticisms. When this happens, it is essential to answer positively and quickly so that these critics do not get viral and start flooding the company's social media sites. For this reason, it is vital that Public Relations constantly monitor what is been said in social media about the organisations they are working for.
The following webcast goes through these and oher issues concerning social media and its relation to PR. I hope you enjoy it!
This video is part of an assignment and has an educational purpose. Images have been taken from different sources on the Internet.
