The importance of social media

In every PR unit during my degree I have learnt about social media and the impact it may have on the community. As I started my first week at the Training Accreditation Council (TAC), one of the first tasks I got given was to create a presentation about social media and what impact is has on reaching stakeholders for governments and businesses.

It is inevitable that social media is playing a dominant role in the society, both positive and negative, and especially for businesses. As a PR professional, we need to understand what possibilities and disadvantages social media may have. After doing my research, I understood that TAC does not include social media as a tool for them to communicate with their clients, although primary research stated that a large per cent of their clients used these social forums. The secondary research stated the importance for governments to include social media as a tool to develop a relationship with stakeholders.Please see Social media guidelines In today’s era where businesses are hugely dependent on the public’s viewpoint and where social media is used by other government bodies as a way of not only communicating with the society, but also as a way to create a positive brand image, TAC can definitely benefit from the use of social media. It came to my knowledge after doing in-depth research internally that TAC has been un-successful with previous communication strategies, and has a large amount of complaints from clients. However, if implementing social media tools as well as traditional communication techniques such as telephone, email and verbal communication, I believe TAC would see a greater per cent age of satisfied stakeholders, both external and internal. Social media is a time-consuming communication method to apply, but after doing the research, it could have more benefits then negatives for TAC, and may create a more positive corporate image then what it is today.