Throughout the 1990’s, according to Pindom (2008) the amount of the world wide websites expanded from 100.000 to more than 160 million websites until today. At this time and age, specialists of public relations are progressively utilize as their main major way of communication, the electronic media. Actually, it is said that online media communication is the most fundamental and essential tool for practitioners of public relations (Phillips, 2000). By this way, the business of PR is forced to employ new technologies for coping effectively with the latest economic, political and sociological realities (Phillips, 2008).
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The current report aims to examine the impact of social media in the industry of public relations exploring the emergence of the approach of new media and the differences, advantages and disadvantages of traditional and new media channels. Moreover, it will investigate the effects of social media in the PR profession as well as the future of PR within the expanded online media usage. At last but not least, some suggestions for strategies will be made for the benefit of PR due to the continuously changing economic, political and social environment.
PR in the era of Social Media
One of the most remarkable facts of the 1990’s was the explosive expansion of the internet which builded a different form of mass communication given that in 1994 it developed into an effective tool for commercial activity (Hanson, 2007). At that time, internet was just exchanging scientific information in contradiction with today which has transformed into an entire world, as a tool of global communication (Wilcox et al, 2009).
Social media didn’t actually start with the use of personal computers but it started off with telephones. Homemade electronic devices that could generate tones that were built in order to allow early social media explorers to make free calls and get access to the experimental back end of the telephone system. Ward Christensen was the first to develop electronic “Bulletin Board System” (BBS) that was opened to the public in 1979. “The first BBSs were small servers powered by personal computers attached to a telephone modem, where one person at a time could dial in and get access. BBSs had social discussions on message boards, community-contributed file downloads, and online games.” Since the late 1960s the internet existed as a network, but the World Wide Web became publicly available in 1991. By the late 90’s Usenet and BBSs were replaced by internet forums that have started growing in popularity.
Social media are divided in the following types with the purpose of better understanding their functionality. First, the most influential type is social networking which includes sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. In this type of sites, people can share content, messages and add friends. Then, another type is Blogs, the most popular tool, which are online interactive journals where the author can share images, text and content from other blogs or websites and allows readers to leave comments. Examples of blogging platforms are WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. Moreover, there are Wikis as for instance Wikipedia, which refers to content created online as a result of multiple users working on the same content, but at different times and from different places. Additionally, Photo sharing, like Flickr and Photobucket, and Video Sharing, like YouTube are sites where people can upload their photos or videos respectively and share them in public. Furthermore, there is Social Bookmarking, for example Digg and Delicious which allow users to share their favorite online content with one another while also creating online bookmarks that the user can refer to in the same way he would a bookmark created offline in his web browser. Finally, there are the Virtual Reality sites, as Second Life, Online Gaming like World of Warcraft.-
So, what is exactly a social medium? Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. As Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as “…a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (p.60).
From the definition mentioned above Social Media can be described as dynamic, interactive, searchable, infinite, syndicated, linkable, and reusable, and the reason why it is growing, and becoming so popular among users is the fact that most of it is free, there’s a lot of traffic, trust, and knowledge being shared. Millions of people now gather and interact online, track news and make their own. Therefore the essential reason for using social media is “…the need for dialogue and open communication”. It is a new communication technology that gives the ability to people to interact with each other but most importantly it gives the ability to people to share and publish information through various audiovisual forms (Weisgerber, 2009).
Social Media is yet another form of media, and a way to transmit information, but unlike traditional media channels, communication is not “top-down” and “one-way” from publisher to reader. It’s communication in all directions – people are sharing and generating their own content. And, unlike traditional media content, social media content is multimedia – linkable text, video, audio, images, even shared comments.
The rapid appearance of social media in the public area and the awareness of a powerful online consumer-force have alerted every kind of business all over the world. As consumers increasingly influence each other and share their opinions on brands and products on the internet, businesses are forced to rethink and reorganize marketing and communication strategies in order to keep up with continually changing consumer trends.
New Media VS Traditional Media
Once, corporate PR strategies were used to control the message by creating a carefully crafted press release and forwarded to newspapers. Traditional PR does not provide communications to accommodate the fundamental shift in our culture. The attractiveness and development of customer generated news has diminished the strenght of “third party credibility.” The power of “gate keepers” has deteriorate due to the staffs cut of electronic and print media and have lessened the “news hole” size in order to burnish profits. There are no less than fourteen types of emerging/new media consisting of RSS feeds, corporate,video and grass root blogs, collaboration and client wikis, podcasts, technorati tags, webcasts,social media, such as facebook and twitter, and virals. All these forms of new media allow users to interact with one another, and by this way “interactivity becomes mainstream”(Phillips,2008,p.79).
At this time and age, the world is essentially different. News and brand identity are no longer controlled through press releases or carefully composed newspaper articles. Brands are shaped by the audience-and the audience is everyone (Ampofo, 2010). People talk and people listen. Social tools, social media, and social engagement are the utilized methods of communication for many large advertising companies that have populated sites like Facebook and Twitter with brand focused pages and interactive techniques. Globalization and Internet have transformed PR, outlying best practices and providing strategic advice for communicating successfully and internationally (Freitag and Strokes, 2009). Using a variety of techniques, businesses can reach new online audiences and create new marketplaces. As social media moves from “buzz word” status to a strategic tool, more practitioners are developing skills related to this online communication technology. Everything is moving towards a digital world. It can be said that people, and more specifically young people, don’t read books, magazines, newspapers anymore. They are exclusively informed, for what they are interested for, through the Internet. Everything is moving into a digital form, consequently everything is turning digital, exactly like PR. Social Media is no longer a trend, or something to try out. As Eyrich, Padman, and Sweetser (2010) say it is becoming an integral part of PR programs. And PR people have to master social media and use them strategically to be effective. It’s clear that we are entering the era of Social Media. They are in our everyday life and everything is done through them: Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations.
Social Media is empowering people to become the new influencers, and it is forcing PR and marketing professionals to recognize and include these powerful tools in their advertising and marketing communications strategies. In other words, there is plenty of literature discussing the potentiality of social media in influencing public opinion as well as behaviour, still however there are no solid evidence demonstrating the power of this media in achieving what is suspected.The truth is that, there aren’t many experts, even though there are many actively trying to play the role.
The effects of social media in public relations
One of the greatest phenomenons of the 21st century is the excessive usage of social media from a diversified audience consisting of a multicultural, multinational, multireligion of every age public. People choose to utilize social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Second Life, because of their social and psychological need to interact (Phillips, 2008). Internet becomes more and more addictive and the human need to interrelate grows steadily even more compelling the PR specialists to use new technologies and new communication channels.
Companies and businesses should use Social Media and get advantage of the benefits that they provide. The reasons are extended to a wide variety. There are many advantages for public relations to use social media as a tool on a daily basis. First of all, Social Media is insensitive to distance as a topic, need, or interest may be targeted on a global basis, there are no gatekeepers/editors as it is flattened with a one to many, and many to many approaches. There’s a lot of interaction as there is feedback whereas discussions take place, as well as debates, and response to requests by people or machines. There are fewer space and time limitations because there is a large and layered capacity for information. In addition the access costs are low, but the necessary computer programming may be expensive.
Another important fact is that Social Media may be customized but also immediate feedback,such as e-mail and online chat rooms, are instant, and at the same time very simple, plus great flexibility in the format is available as multimedia is being used .
Social Media provides the advantage of selecting from up to hundreds of social media bookmarks and tags; it also views “on-the-fly online performance indicators right from the public relation release.” Aids PR practitioners stay aware of what people are saying about the release (e.g. Digg, Technorati). Moreover it views the number of locations the press release is listed in Google, Windows Live and Yahoo! (e.g. PRStats), and assists interaction with visitors who view the news. Finally, it can help in Managing coordinated attacks on brands by activist groups without the ‘campaigns’ turning into PR nightmares (Crisis Management).
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Last but not least, let’s not forget that PR is about creating relationships. So, social media provide exactly this, through the many tools and application each Social Medium has. Social Media, lead to effective communication, which builds trust and strong relationships with media, bloggers, analysts, influencers, and customers. Also it creates presence; it enhances brand loyalty and extends brand resonance.
Public relations practitioners will repeatedly be required to exploit new management communication skills where there might be specific according to the interest, group and/or community. Once upon a time, the strength of media ownership was depending upon the circulation size whereas now it is depended upon the connection in the online community (Phillips, 2008). According to Lydia Graham, President of Graham Associates in San Francsisco, taking as an example the evolution of a press release flow within the internet, it is now considered to be an online web page directly adressed to the consumer who is able to access it at the same time with the journalist impacting the style, content and format. In addition, news release can approach a whole online community; that’s why it is no longer one-dimensional.
Overall,it can be said that the growth of social media is spreading out whereas the industry of public relations can benefit from this expansion. The world communication structure is being altered and PR must adjust to the framework of the changing environment.
Looking at the Future: instead of Conclusion
In a nutshell, social media have come a long way since BBS on the late 80’s and the launch of the first social networks to the area of Facebook, Twitter and Blogs. Larry Weber, a professional in building global Communications companies including Weber Shandwick Worldwide, suggests that the communications world is dramatically moving in a digital direction and those who understand this transformation will communicate much more effectively than those who do not (Weber, 2007). Social media continues to evolve continually, with major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements on an almost daily basis, it’s sure to keep evolving in coming years. Public Relations with the use of Web 2.0 tools can deliver one or many messages. Interaction, immediate reaction and customization are the characteristics of these tools that aid PR practitioners to stay tuned with the publics. Therefore, Blogs can be all of the above and are used within and outside organizations to inform , effect and generate interest over any subject that concerns the media.
As described earlier, the last years’ social media have become one of the major communication tools of a large number of individuals around the world. Their rapid rise gave companies the opportunity to use them as one of their major public relations, marketing, advertising and promoting tool. They are providing people with a rapid method for communication. They are a «strategic marketing tool» and provide industries and companies with a simple way for promoting their brand image globally. Social media is a way for building immediate relationships with your customers and maintaining them. Since mobile devices have become the central way of how people communicate with each other, mobile phones for social media networking is the number one future goal. Keeping in mind that today there are more than 500 million Facebook users who are actively signing up to their accounts from not only their PCs but also their mobile phones. This leads to a new era where future will be mobile. With the increased use of Smartphones such as BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone, people are moving towards a mobile and wired web union.
If we already have reached the crest, what else is remaining to conquer? Web 2.0 along with blogs is here, and what is coming next is referred to as Web 3.0. Web 3.0 won’t only be about reading, and writing but it will also deliver “…a new generation of business applications that will see business and social computing converge on the same fundamentals as on-demand architecture has for consumer applications. Web 3.0 era will radically change individuals’ career paths as well as the organizations where they work”.
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