Social Media and Beyond

J. Schuyler Crabtree

4/13/10

The field of public relations has been furthered with every new communication outlet created and made available to the public. However, as new media outlets are developed, the impact of their use with the public slowly becomes exhausted. People have slowly learned to look past billboards, fast-forward past television commercials, and scan over printed promotions. With social media on the other hand, people are actively immersing themselves within a media outlet by ensuring they are up to date on a daily basis.

Social media outlets provide public relations professionals with the perfect setting to reach publics because they in turn understand that people are actively using social media outlets for the purpose of staying up to date with not only friends, but communities and organizations as well. A setting where an array of all kinds of people belonging to diverse publics are available through a non-location specific venue is an advertiser’s or public relations professional’s dream come true.

With additions to social media site (like Facebook and Twitter), organizations even become involved in the “social” process. People have an incentive to follow organizations on Twitter due to the updates they receive that inform them about sales, discounts, new products, etc. People have an incentive to become fans of people and organizations as well as friend them for similar benefits, but also as a means of self-expression.

On Facebook, many users “fan,” “friend,” or write about organizations on their profile as a way of communicating how they identify themselves and how they want other people to perceive them. Writing things in “activities” and “about me” sections also allows public relations professionals to search for people by interest as another means of narrowing target publics.

The biggest thing to remember about social media is that it is just beginning. The Internet has only been available to the public for a couple decades, and has rapidly improved over time since it’s beginnings. Not only is the Internet still being improved upon, but social media has too, as it will likely continue to do so.

For PR professionals, the most likely improvements in the near future for social media probably include more advanced searching techniques. While organizations can find people based on interests now, they will probably soon be able to use technology similar to that which Pandora operates on – finding people based on similar interests based off already listed interests rather than listed interests alone.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5