Why social media?

Social media - the virtual space, where we can share thoughts, experiences, discuss political, economic issues or whatever we want. The world is literally at your fingertips. You simply cannot afford to ignore it.

So how can the opportunities provided by social media be useful for you? The power of social media lies within its opportunity to connect directly with your audience. Also, by using its tools effectively you can save time and money – as most of it is free.

Lisa Buyer, President & CEO of the Buyer Group has said, “social media creates more opportunities for PR people and marketers, it is not killing PR”. In fact, social media, in many ways, empowers communication – providing new ways to talk to your audience, and for them to talk back to you on an even playing field. Social media provides a wealth of information not only for PR practitioners but also for journalists.

Today, society and technology evolve very quickly. Old ideas become obsolete and new competitors with fresh inspiration gain the day. You must be unique and purposeful.  Take a look at the Old Spice YouTube campaign, which was one of the most successful social media campaigns in 2011. More people watched its videos in 24 hours than those who watched Obama’s presidential victory speech. It achieved 40 million video views in a week, and in the last month the sales were up by 107%.

 So, how can your organisation succeed in the space of social media? We have put together 5 top tips to help you achieve this:

1.    Set up your Goals and Objectives: what is it you exactly want to achieve? Do you want to provide customer service? Do you want to drive more people to your website? Do you want to gain meaningful feedback?  Or do you want a combination of all of these? Devise a plan to achieve those goals. Keep your objectives Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely (SMART)!

2.    Research, research and research even more: all the networks have their own characteristics and varying demographics. You need to find the ones that are a good fit for you and for your market as well. Develop a list of social media sites where you can engage with people. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are the most popular, but also consider LinkedIn, Google+, blogs and forums.

3.    Join the conversation! You can start joining the conversations by commenting on blogs and forums, answering questions on Yahoo and joining Twitter chats. Evaluate what is working and what is not - then strengthen relationships by attending relevant online events. Why not host your own? Become the platform for discussion and invite others to join you.

4.    Measure results: get familiar with Google Analytics, Hootsuit and Klout. Google Analytics let you see how many people visit your website from your social media platforms.  Hootsuit is the best tool for managing multiple social media platforms; Klout is a good way of measuring how effective your social media efforts are. Also, keep ahead of the conversation by monitoring Twitter trends on Twitterfall.

5.    Analyse and improve: you need to constantly evaluate the effectiveness of your social media campaigns, improve your activities and make all the new findings useful for your business processes.

In the modern age, you cannot afford to ignore social media. It is a powerful space when you have clear objectives – don’t simply join Twitter because everyone else is. Ask yourself what do I want to achieve from this? Where is the best place for me to do this with my target audience? How am I going to make the most of this? Your target audience is a part of this big virtual society, all you need is to use its tools in the right way to be successful in your business.

Laura-Cristina Les

Account Executive (Intern)

MAPR at De Montfort University, Leicester

Where has the common sense gone?

Here we are… 2012, and ethics is still an issue in so many parts of our life.

But why do ethics take such an important place in public relations activities? How can practitioners develop their ethical approach to practice? Do journalists need to co-operate with PR practitioners at all?

Let's start at the beginning, ethical activities boost transparency, which leads to truth, trust and integrity. Consequently the reputation of public relations and your organisation depends on this. With the Leveson inquiry still looming in the background, and stories of the MP’s expenses scandal not too far away, it just goes to show how important transparent communication is in the contemporary public sphere.

Since the importance of transparent communication is becoming ever more apparent, now is the time that we, as responsible public relations practitioners can drive this issue forward and establish meaningful, open and honest dialogue for the organisation’s we represent.

Consider your last piece of poor customer service. From my experience, this tends to stem from an individual telling you that they ‘cannot’ do something. No further explanation. No consideration to your questions or your loyalty. Why was there no apology? Why was there no explanation? Why was there no indication of what they were going to do to resolve my problem? It is often a situation where common sense gets forgotten.

Okay, returning faulty items to a store might be a distance away from your stakeholder communication programme, for example, but it certainly follows a similar philosophy. This is particularly important when communicating in a crisis situation.

1. Be open and honest about success and when things do not go according to plan. Hiding when things go wrong can lead to sceptical analysis of your situation, where a simple explanation may suffice.
2. Always be prepared for the question, ‘why?’ Always find out the cause of the problem and be prepared to explain this openly. If you don’t provide an explanation you also leave yourself open to the wrong information being circulated. Present the facts for criticism, not rumours. If you are investigating the cause of the problem, say so, and issue the results of your findings afterwards.
3. Finally, how are you going to resolve this? Take control of the situation; be open about the way you are going to get back on track. Situation’s such as these aren’t necessarily failures, they are, as Philip Clarke of Tesco has rightly pointed out, opportunities to grow stronger than you were before.

Of course, this is highly condensed, but I hope you get the general idea behind this. For a more detailed look at how to communicate in a crisis I recommend reading the Institute for Public Relations article on this issue. The intention of this post was to give you some food for thought into how common sense can improve transparency in your communication activities.

However, it is important that graduates continue to learn the importance of this issue and maintain this philosophy as they move into employment. It is all too easy to get caught up in the need to gain only positive coverage and forget these principles of common sense. It was certainly reassuring to find that transparency was one of the top priorities for our intern from De Montfort University when she joined us. We will ensure this remains the same when she returns to her studies.