Social media and public relations

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, Foursquare, Myspace, deviantART, Flickr, Google+, Blogger and more. These are all probably social media pages that you’ve stumbled upon during your time exploring the Internet.

In this day in age its almost impossible for someone to be completely offline. The Internet and the way in which we communicate, has drastically changed over the past couple of decades.

The rise of the use of social media has played a vital role in public relations, cutting down the barriers between customer and company. With customers being able to communicate directly with a company and its PR department. This form of communication has both its advantages and disadvantages, allowing organisations with a direct link of communication however it can also open the door for online attacks.

At Harvey’s Cureageous Pride social media played a vital role in raising awareness and support for the cause. It provided the organisation with statistical evidence of the level of awareness that the organisation was having online. 

As a part of the public relations plan which I have devised, one of the objectives is to increase Facebook page likes to 1,500 by September 2014. The weekly updates supplied by Facebook provided the organisation with clear indications of its weekly progress. The updates provided vital information in terms of community engagement and awareness.

At Harvey's Cureageous Pride, Instagram images were posted along side Facebook updates. While the Instagram posts did not achieve as large of a reach as the Facebook updates. At Harvey's Cureageous Pride social media played a vital role in community engagement and awareness, with predominant community engagement strategies focused on the online market. The organisation demonstrates how you can run a successful campaign utilising only online resources. In order to successfully engage the target publics Harvey's Cureageous Pride relied on releasing a consistent flow of information that intrigued the audience.
Social media plays an important role in the development of an organisations brand. The kind of engagement created by social media builds brand loyalty rather than just consumers. Brands which do not engage in social media strategies risk alienating their target publics, damaging their reputations. Furthermore, these organisations miss out on discussions which occur within their markets, missing out on identifying trends and consumer demands. Social media provides brands with the opportunity to better engage with their target audience by communicating with them on a personal level, building genuine relationships with influential online users is an important avenue for public relation practices.
While social media is still a new tool in the public relations tool box it is one not to be ignored.

Social media - no longer just an assignment procrastination tool

The role of ‘new’ media, ie. Social Media

At uni and in the public relations industry in general, we are often told of the importance of being familiar with “new media”, also known as social media. For the present day public relations graduate, calling the media “new” is amusing seeing as the majority of us have grown up with it, and we are now more connected with society than ever! The majority of us are very familiar and skilled at using social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, blogs, and the newer ones Instagram and Pinterest.
 

Facebook timeline crisis

Earlier this year in mid-February, Facebook announced their new 'timeline' layout being rolled out for brands as of March 31st. This annoucement, while not entirely unexpected, caused a bit of a hurdle – especially as we had been working with the creative agency on a new Facebook ‘splash’ page for the old layout of the Student Edge fan page (eg. drive the like). Our communications team worked hard to ensure we were going to ‘timeline ready’. Along with the new timeline announcement, Facebook also released a set of updated guidelines, in particular that the ‘cover’ photo could not advertise the products or have a call to action to like the page.

Anna our marketing gun worked closely with a consultant who specialised in social media for brands (what a brilliant job! Definitely something I would like to do!) to roll out the new timeline (especially revising the creative) for the Student Edge Facebook page.

My role in this was to review the current copy in the ‘About’ section to ensure it was updated to be on tone with the new Student Edge brand. After Sharyn reviewed my comments I was told to cut it down. Unlike at university, in the real world less is NOT more, particularly when speaking as a brand that communicates primarily to 15-17 year olds! Check out my Facebook copy here.
 

Using social media as a brand

Having the insight into how brands use Facebook is fascinating. As an avid Facebook user myself, I am very well versed in using it as a personal user – and in doing so, maintaining my own ‘brand’: setting my privacy settings to high, detagging potential incriminating photos, etc. However, using Facebook as a brand adds a whole new dimension. As I’ve learnt, there are two things that need to be considered when setting up a social media page for a company:

1. Who is your target public? There is no point having a Facebook page if your target audience is not on Facebook.
2. What is your communication objective? Do you wish to ‘broadcast’ to your fans (eg post messages) or engage with them? Whichever approach is taken, companies needs to remember that social media cannot be controlled, and that people ‘follow’ or ‘like’ you because there is something in it for them.

Great use of Facebook timeline

In the process of developing the Facebook timeline creative for Student Edge, we looked to what other brands were doing well. See below for some examples:

Fanta:
In their Facebook page, you can see they have integrated their profile picture into their cover picture which is very clever. The profile picture also works as a 'stand alone'. Fanta uses their page to engage fans and has utilised the 'timeline' feature well, with important milestones filled in (eg. back to 1955)

Student Edge:
With the Student Edge Facebook page, the profile picture was also made to be able to 'stand alone', as well as be consistent with the rest of the cover photo. The Student Edge Facebook page is used to engage members as well as drive traffic back to the website. Student Edge’s use of Facebook is a major focus for this year. It is the social network of the moment, and it is where their target market is.

 
Have a look at this thought provoking article on PR Daily: Why 2 million brands should shutter their Facebook pages. The article argues that you either need to do a Facebook page well or not at all. I agree!



Beyond Facebook
 
It will be interesting to see what the new ‘new media’ will be after Facebook – the wave will not last forever – remember MySpace? There is a lot of industry buzz around Pinterest, but I’m not yet entirely convinced. What do you think?


Rachel