Social Media IS Public Relations.
Established media has always been the ‘gate keepers’ of information. Ten years ago if you wanted to contact a large group of people you had no choice but to go through television, newspapers and radio. Today’s technology allows businesses to bypass those ‘gate keepers’ and directly deliver their message to their audience. Established media still plays an important role in a public relations strategy, but that role is shrinking and will continue to shrink as individuals have more power in this age of global communications.
This is a fantastic time for businesses to reach out and connect with their customers and potential customers. By building relationships through social media, a business can help recruit and build a loyal customer before that customer has even had a chance to purchase the product or service.
Businesses can also post news or respond to crises in a much more personal and time sensitive way than ever before. Because a business has a direct line to their client base they are able to instantly respond to any problems that they may be facing.
Of course this does lead to complications as well. Because we’re no longer in a ‘push’ media world, where a business can send out a message without thought to the response, and are now have an ‘exchange’ media, where the public has the ability to respond directly to a business, good public relations strategies are more important than ever. The message that goes out MUST be well thought out and very transparent.
Another concern is that because the audiences have the ability to directly contact the company, on a public platform, we must be more aware of the answers we provide. Whereas before we could simply ignore a complaint because the only person who knew about it was the person who wrote it, we now must realize that a single negative comment posted on a social media site has the potential to be seen by our entire fan base.
KLM is a good example. When they had delays due to a volcano they used social media to work directly with their customers through their Facebook page. If you visited KLM’s Facebook during that time you would find hundreds of people complaining or trying to reschedule flights. While in the end it seemed that most of the people were understanding and did get the help they needed, because it was completely public many people may have visited the KLM page and gotten the wrong idea. Suddenly all of KLM’s ‘dirty laundry’ was being aired over a public and very visible channel.
I think that traditionally Public Relations has been a department that focused on the big picture. Press Releases and crisis management, but because the reach of social media public relations professionals have to be more aware of the general status that their company is held in and adapt to individual changes in a much more fluid manner. It’s not about sending out the big press releases and talking to a few important news makers. When anyone and everyone has a voice, businesses must make sure that they continue to respond to the individuals and individual groups.
Public Relations is more important than ever before.
