With the rise of the internet and digital age, social media has taken over. People are always sending tweets, checking their Facebook feed, or reading blogs for news. With this technology and the different social media sites, information is at our finger tips. So how does this affect the PR?
It can be argued that social media can make things more difficult for PR professionals because people can say whatever they want. A company or PR professionals cannot control what others say about them on their Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platform. According to an article on Jontus Media, social media has made it easier for customers to complain. Without the face-to-face interaction, people are more comfortable writing reviews. Too many bad reviews, and the company’s reputation could be ruined.
Event though social media can negatively impact a company based on reviews, it is still possible for social media to help a company. The best thing for a company to do is to take a proactive approach by monitoring and responding to reviews. By showing they care and by taking the information their customers give them, they can make a plan to ensure the company is seen in a positively.
Building or rebuilding a reputation is not the only thing social media can be used for. Social media can be very beneficial for a company’s PR because of three reasons:
- Increased News Coverage:
Social media is a great way for companies to show the public what they are doing. News that would originally be given to tradition media sources via press releases can now be posted on a company’s Facebook or Twitter. It also means the news can spread faster. If someone finds a post from a company interesting, they can retweet it or send it to their friends. - Consumer Interactions:
Before the digital age, if a consumer had a question or complaint about a service or product, they’d need to call a company line and wait to speak to a representative. Social media has changed that. It is not possible to tweet a question to a company to have the issue resolved. I myself have done this before. Nike offers a service called Nike+ to track workouts. One day my sensor didn’t record my run, and I didn’t know how to fix that, so I sent them a message on their Facebook page and within minutes I had a response and a fixed product. It’s immediacy with responses that makes social media an important part of consumer relations. - Cheap or Free Advertising:
Social media platforms provide a place for companies to showcase their products or services. It is also a great way to advertise in a less expensive way. One post on a company’s Facebook can spread like wildfire to people’s newsfeeds. Or a company’s product posted on Pinterest can be repinned thousands of times. It is hard to pay for advertising that reaches so many people the way social media does.
Although people believe social media can be negative for companies, the positives it brings outweighs the negative.
Muffy Lavens 
Totally agree that social media is a must have for companies to move forward these days, although I won’t use the word ‘free’ advertising. Like you mentioned, the best approach involves social media monitoring (for good legal reasons too) and good online research takes up a lot of time, in order to implement a sound social media strategy. Great sites with amazing designs & original visuals/vlogs have require production costs.’Free advertising’ is a mindset that encourages companies to use interns or pay peanuts for social media practitioners, which ruins the market and fills the web with ineffective social media profiles. ‘Lower media costs’ might be a better term =)
What do you think?
Jesz
I like “lower media costs.” That is a great way to put it.
Thanks 🙂
Ops just saw my string of bad grammar. Ouch!
Thou shalt reduce thy use of the iPhone for typing long comments >.<
Thanks for the link to my piece. You might want to listen to a podcast interview I did with UK social media strategis Karen Fewell. She talks about a great example of how Virgin listen and respond to customers using Twitter. http://jontusmedia.com/putting-social-media-into-practice-with-karen-fewell/
Thanks for the link! I will be sure to check it out.
I completely agree about how social media is a good thing for companies. As for everything in the world there are always going to be negatives and positives, but like you said the positives outweigh the negatives. The best part about companies being able to use social media is the consumer interactions. Like you said about contacting Nike about your sensor. I too have been able to use Facebook to complain about a product that I was sold and they replied back within days and made sure that I was taken care of. This is just the beginning of social media and I can’t wait to see what else it will bring us!
It’s true. Consumer interactions is a great part of social media. When consumers feel connected to the company and that the company actually cares for them, they are going to like it more. There is so much social media has to offer. It’s like you said, this is just the beginning.
At this point it’s really detrimental to not use social media to promote your company. It definitely causes more work, but it’s become such a vital part of communication and it’s not going away. The best thing to do at this point is look at the bright side, which you did. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my blog. It’s true, social media isn’t going away and it’s such a big part of communication that it needs to be adapted into everyday life: business and personal.