Public Relations in a Digital World

The future of public relations is turning increasingly to social media. As the world of media keeps evolving, we will see an increasing reliance on social media. However, perhaps the use of social media is not as important as the social capital it can bring. Social capital is the value that comes from being known and trusted within a social network. Much like monetary capital, it can reap real benefits for a business or organization. Social capital is especially important for PR practitioners since our share of monetary capital is often notoriously low. The real beauty in social media then, according to tech expert Tara Hunt, is its capacity to build social capital for an organization. This also means, however, that one cannot just throw some information at a Facebook page or Tweet whatever randomly comes to mind. The old PR principles of researching, knowing your audience and what they want, answering the “What’s in it for me?” question, and common sense still apply. We can’t simply throw these ideas out the window but must be prepared for the future, which apparently, we are not. According to social media blogger Jason Falls, many colleges around the country are not teaching students to deal with social media. I feel very lucky to be here at Gaylord College, where most faculty understand the need for a more digital education and the facility and mindset of the college reflect that. In the end, relationships and networks are still going to be our most valuable asset, and we need to learn how to build that social capital in a digital, modern way.

by Laura Bennett
image courtesy of Amy Abrahams at amyabrahams.com

Communicating with a College Audience

Communicating with a College Audience

By Christie Gunn

With each generation, young people are becoming increasingly media savvy. As the amount of messages they receive on a given day increase and the methods used to deliver these messages become more varied, college students better their ability to filter, and often ignore, these messages. So what are the best ways to reach this audience?

Some suggest what is called a “360 degree” approach. As the name suggests, it involves send the same message as many times in as many different channels as possible. These methods include print media, online advertising, social media, blogs, vlogs (video blogs such as youtube.com), and text messages to their cell phones.

Others highlight social-media communication, in particular, as the best way to influence the college audiences. This was the case when Hewlett-Packard tapped Edleman PR to handle the promotion of its personal systems group.

It is also interesting to note, using text messages to communicate with students in the event of an emergency is becoming more common on college campuses, particularly after the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. OU instituted this system last year, and many students received alerts on their phones last semester when the campus was briefly locked down. Though this method may not be widely used for non-emergency communication, past president indicates it is only a matter of time until it is.

Perhaps the worst method to contact a younger demographic is the landline telephone. Most students do not have landline numbers, and they are no longer readily available in dorms, apartments, and greek residences on the OU campus.

Though this research I learned just how difficult it can be to get a message to the college audience and make them remember it. Before researching this post, I also did not know how many universities are using text messages to warn students in case of emergency. The public relations value of the articles and blogs I referenced in this post is strongly related to my client, the Sooner yearbook, who is trying to reach OU students and increase the sales of the yearbook.