Social Media

The internet first emerged in the 60’s when it existed only in academic circles. From Bill Gates and Bill Joy¹ to Mark Zuckerberg², we cover almost half a century of development that deeply affects our profession.

Some may argue that all those changes make public relations work more difficult. However I agree with Rob Brown who believes that despite the complexities social web brings to us, it makes the work of practioners more transparent getting rid of unethical practioners – but this is a subject we will explore in a later post when we talk about ethics.

In Consumer PR, instead of companies telling people what to buy, people can start to tell companies what to make. This is truly two way communications. Also there is a new trend due to social web. B to B and B to C, are not the only relevant business formats but C to C – consumer to consumer - is very significant in our days.

In NGO, social media has transformed even more all aspects of campaigning. On-line petitions have been highly effective and gathering incredible amounts of supporters. The high use of creativity and low costs involved has made possible campaigns like the Girl Effect - just to mention one of the campaigns that raised awareness among millions of people.

Shall we mention the changes in the Political scene and Obama’s presidential campaign? Yes, public relations in politic has been reshaped with new and social media. Whenever governments or politicians decide to use social media to listen and dialogue with people it becomes a huge success. Too bad, most politicians still believe it is a tool for one way communication.

On the down side, the misuse of social media can create significant damages to reputation. If before there was a risk of saying anything inappropriate in front of a camera accidentally left recording, today there are cameras in everyone’s hands and videos can quickly become hits on social web sites. Media training and PR advice is therefore indispensable.

Those are just a few examples of social media effects on Public Relations field there is so much more to talk about… we will return to this subject. But next week there will be more on…

Notes

1 - Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and mostly known for his contribution on BDS UNIX from which emerged many systems including MAC OS X from Apple.

2 - Creator of Facebook

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If you want to know more, here are some of my inspirations:

Book Public Relations and the Social Web

Book Outliers