Effectively using social media and upcoming trends in public relations

By: Christy Ferguson







Public relations professionals are always looking for new trends to improve the business. According to many articles online that discuss public relations trends of 2010, social media is becoming one of the best vehicles for public relations practitioners to reach their target audiences and/or clients. This semester my campaigns group and I have been using all different forms of social media (Facebook, Twitter and blogging) for our client the Norman Arts Council. Within a few months, the awareness of the NAC has significantly increased just through the usage of social media alone. Along with Facebook and Twitter, the new social media foursquare is a great way to interactively keep in touch with what is going on around you in the city where you live.

Because we now live in a very fast paced world, social media is a nice tool that allows for public relations professionals to stay in touch with work and clients while on the go. Handheld electronics make it even easier for people to access their social media, and I feel that sometimes it has even become a distraction within the working world. Although social media is a great tool for the PR professionals, we don’t want it to distract people to the point where it is the only thing they rely upon.

In the article Public Relations Trends 2010 by Christine Perkett, she says, “It’s an exciting time to see PR going back to people and relationships. Successful PR executives know how to build and maintain quality relationships – today, social media is a core part of making that happen.” I completely agree with this but at the same time I think PR professionals have forgotten how important it is to create mutually beneficial relationships and to actually meet face to face with a client rather than over the Internet. If you please your client or employers by doing good work for them, then you have benefitted from this relationship because you know that can do your job to the upmost ability. Don’t get me wrong, social media and the Internet are great, but we need to make sure that we are still creating strong relationships and keeping clients in the forefront of our minds at all times.

CR Ransom’s article 2010 Five Smartest PR Moves and Trends to Start Now, gives great advice to those who are already in the PR field or who will be in the near future. These PR moves included everything from value awareness and branded exposure to event effects and social engagement. I think event effect is interesting because it is basically creating events “that leave lasting effects to influence brand loyalty.” We so often promote events whether there is a “wow” factor or not. It’s time that PR professionals go out and promote events that they know will be successful and stand out among other events.

I look back 10 years ago and wonder how people communicated without the social media we have today. Social media has made our job as PR practitioners more efficient and it is easier to stay in contact with those who are important to us. Another great thing about social media is that it is constantly growing and with that, the communication vehicles seem to be getting better and better. For instance, we started out with MySpace followed by Facebook, Twitter and now foursquare. What will the future bring?

Image courtesy of http://www.dirjournal.com/guides/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/social-media.jpg

Where are YOU?

Where are YOU?

By: Ryan N. DeGiacomo

Public relations practitioners utilize social media daily in their efforts to generate awareness about clients, to proactively communicate with clients, and to respond timely in reference to inquiries or issues. Social networking sites have quickly become important tools of choice in a public relations professional’s expansive toolkit. In the ever-changing world of social media, there is a hot new trend generating the buzz for public relations professionals: geolocation. Gowalla is a social media tool allowing its users to “check in” at locations that they visit and follow their friends’ movements around the globe.

Gowalla disseminates information depicting users’ real-time whereabouts, allowing users to share information about favorite haunts while increasing the odds of running into friends. PR Tactics says that the service links up with Twitter and Facebook, allowing a much broader audience to view location-based updates. In fact Mashable reports that Twitter launched its very own location-based feature last week, and Facebook is expected to soon unveil the same.

Public relations practitioners can utilize these sites to accomplish their objectives by offering users rewards for checking in at their sites while clients benefit from one another by exchanging information about new venues, causes, cities and businesses. The mutually beneficial relationships are infinite. Gowalla enables users to update their geolocation (similar to Facebook status updates), follow their friend's updates (similar to Twitter feeds) and upload videos (YouTube) and photos (Picasa, Flickr) depicting their current location. Gowalla is expedient for clients who travel frequently because, like most social networking media, Gowalla is now available in mobile versions on iPhones, Blackberrys, other smart phones and PDAs.

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

Social Media.... What will they think up next?

Social Media… What will they think up next?

The purpose of Public Relations is to build relationships with the public. Many people have found interesting ways to build relationships. Social Media has been around for awhile. It started with Xanga and moved to Myspace and now social media website are popping up everywhere. Crenshaw Communications published an article in early January discussing the ten trends that are affecting public relations professionals in 2010. One of the trends is that “influencers will have more influence.” Social media will and has played a big part in influencing others. I think the biggest social media contributor is Twitter.

Many celebrities have twitter accounts and post regularly on them. Twitter is a channel for celebrities to build relationships with everyday people as well as promote philanthropies. For example, Shawn Johnson, the Olympic gold medalist is an activist for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Selena Gomez, a rising Disney star, is an activist for UNICEF and just helped with the UNICEF Haiti campaign. While it is very cool to learn about what philanthropies they support and help out, it is also interesting and fun to read about celebrities as normal people. As a public relations professional I would want a celebrity to tweet about supporting my organization because they are going to have more influence as time goes on. Twitter has figured out the public relations and advertising side of their website because an article from NewsOK came out today saying they just debuted what’s called “promoted tweets.” Twitter is now allowing companies to pay to have their tweets or messages show up first in a search. For example, if a person searched for coffee, Starbucks tweets would show up first.

Social media has come a long way and it is scary to see where it might go. I think Twitter is a great thing. It’s a great way to stay connected to companies, celebrities, and everyday people. Print and broadcast journalism have to compete with the internet. Right now it looks like social media is working in the public relations professional world, but will it always?


Liedtke, Michael. "Twitter to Have Paid Tweets Show up in Searches | NewsOK.com." Oklahoma Top Headlines for News, Sports, Weather, Entertainment and More | NewsOK.com. 13 Apr. 2010. Web. 13 Apr. 2010. .

"Ten Trends Affecting PR Professionals In 2010 « Crenshaw Communications." Crenshaw Communications. 02 Jan. 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. .

Image: http://www.ngonlinenews.com/media/media-news/news-thumb/100202/celebtwtiter.jpg

140 Characters & a back-stage pass to the world-wide industry of Fashion.

By: Jillian Manon Chopin
April 12, 2010
Public Relations and the Future

When I first began with courses such as Intro to PR, Writing for Mass Media, and News Gathering, I was being taught the basics of PR ... and even traditional PR at that. As I have progressed through all required classes however, and as I am now in my final semester of campaigns with Dr. Carstarphen here at OU, I can say that I’ve learned much more about PR. I’ve learned about how I can use PR in countless ways ... simply because it can be molded to fit so many different needs and desires within all industries. For example - upon graduation, I plan to move back to my home city of Dallas, Texas and begin my search for a job in the fashion industry. Similar to what has been explored in several blogs for this assignment, I've found that social media has given notable rise to several industries around the world. The modern advancement of the fashion industry has exponentially expounded on a World Wide Web basis thanks to the possibilities within the social media sphere. Whereas a "back-stage pass" used to be just that, backstage – people from all different corners of the earth are becoming more and more exposed to the fashion industry via fashion blogging, through this sort of "back-stage pass."

Nowadays, if you are interested in going into the public relations field of the fashion industry, you must, and I emphasize must, be willing and able to navigate your way around social media websites such as Twitter and blogger in order to effectively promote your brand, reach your target publics, and basically – keep from being 'fashionably late' to what everyone else may already deem as 'last season.' Fashion, at its core, is a phenomena forever searching for the ‘up and coming’ so to speak. What is trendy right now - versus - what was trendy five minutes ago are things one must know when aspiring to strut upon the runway amidst other public relations fashionistas. Using my own personal Twitter account to follow fashion designers, bloggers, and so forth, I am quickly learning the ins-and-outs of how to be a public relations fashionista via social media. I now follow 74 Twitter pages, roughly 85% of which are related strictly to fashion. I follow designers such as Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, and Yves Saint Laurent and I am also following several fashion magazines and fashion blogger Twitters.

What I am learning from following these pages is that, first off – nearly everybody who is anybody is participating. There is so much to gain from relating to the public through social media that ultimately, you do not want to miss out on the countless opportunities that can be gained. The difficulty comes when deciding what to tweet about and how to format your tweets. Obviously, when you are given only 140 characters to convey your message, you must be concise, clear and catchy. Fashion goers tweet about everything from up-coming events to who is wearing what and where did they purchase it. For example, VogueParisLive constantly tweets about fashion shows, and provides links of pictures to engage their Twitter followers even more. WhoWhatWear posts tweets daily with a certain celebrity’s name and then a link to the most recent paparazzi photo flashed, while then attempting to identify each piece of fashion that person is wearing. This sort of thing is good for a brand because when a celebrity gains enough clout within the industry, they become an influential – especially within the fashion and pop culture society. These are the people who create fads, who introduce news trends, and who deem what is cool for the times. Therefore, a tweet as simple as a picture of Kim Kardashian can turn into drastic increase in sales for designers and brands that she frequently wears such as Bebe and Hermes. People who are interested in influential’s want to know what they are wearing and where they got their items. It is at that time when a public relations fashionista must come in and take advantage of the opportunities available through social media to increase their brand recognition and success.

There are also Twitter pages devoted specifically to fashion PR such as PR_Couture, ShineMediaPR, LolaPR,, and FashionBlogNews. These Twitter pages are dedicated to tweeting about public relations within the fashion industry. Provided below is a direct link to a interview that was held with the Creative Director of Nine West. Now, as this video does not directly address public relations and fashion together, it shows how modern day practitioners have a great opportunity to reach fashion craved obsessors worldwide and deliver truly valuable know-how, insight, and back-stage knowledge about using social media to project fashion onwards. PR_Couture is the Twitter for a fashion blog entitled “PR Couture – Fashion PR’s Haute Spot.” If you go to their actual website, abundant information is provided for the interested and aspiring public relations fashionista.

In conclusion, this new public relations trend within the fashion industry of using social media to strategically and creatively provide an all-access pass to those interested is only going to become more and more advanced and involved. Nowadays, you can live-stream fashion shows, you can follow fashion blogger web sites, discover frankly who anybody is wearing, and you can become a fashion icon within your own right simply through blogging, tweeting, and most definitely – posting pictures of your most proud moments walking down the catwalk of life in what ever ensemble you see fit, pun intended. What is marvelous about this advancement of social media with fashion public relations is that is delivers to the customer, delivers to the supplier, and creates a cycle of never ending expression, innovation, and modernization. Also, everything is so visual, and with fashion being visual at its very nature, all things collaborate so chic-ly when combining fashion, public relations, and social media.

Picture from: http://hautpr.com/fashionpr

Interview with Nine West Creative Director: http://www.prcouture.com/2010/04/12/fashion-pr-interview-nine-west-creative-director-and-sr-marketing-director-in-san-diego/

Industry changes affect public relations employment

Industry changes affect public relations employment

Katlin Francis

April 12, 2010

Public relations is not an isolated field encapsulated in a bubble. Even the slightest market trends and changes can drastically affect a PR campaign. For instance, the current fad is corporate responsibility and going green. If a small change can alter strategies and tactics think of the larger changes. Current legislature is making big changes and deserves watchful public relations attention. The new health care reforms will result in an influx of stimulus dollars. This one example can spell the end of one public relation's practitioner's job and the beginning of a new job opening.

In the economic downturn every one wants job security, this is no different in public relations and a developing trend is fluid employment changes. While reading the news is already a PR necessity, keeping tabs on changes coming from the White House will give a prepared practitioner a much needed edge in the marketplace. By surveying the political scene a well informed practitioner will be ready if their job is about to be dissolved or the opportunity for new and better employment arises.

Public relations industries need to follow the money in order to avoid becoming extinct and continue evolving. Technology plays and important factor in keeping up on industry trends. The growth and development of social media is heralded as the newest public relations and advertising necessity. Clients want to stay fresh in the minds of their target audiences and need public relation practitioners familiar with the newest technological trends and techniques such as viral videos which are impossible to promise.

image created in Photoshop by Katlin Francis