Public Relations and Social Media by James L. Horton

Many of the traditional media user has shifted to the usage of the new media, the Public Relations practitioner now need to consider the role and thus learn the way to ensure that the new media as the essential communication tools for the audiences. The biggest challenges that the new social media is that the segmenting the audience is nothing like the old ways as everyone are expose to the information that they sought after. Conversely, because of its nature, the social media has also been divided into several segments meaning to serve also a different set of audience.

The biggest challenge that can be seen within the social media is the issue of return-on-investment. Practitioner might have a lot of effort but the result might not be as what as expected. Another challenge that occurs is influence. Practitioner need to determine which social media is the better choice of an audience. Research can be done in but there isn’t a finite guarantee that the message can be sent across.

The third challenge is time, as social media need to be used effectively in order one to gain trust from the required which is the least expected for the clients. Clients of the public relations practitioner need the later to have accomplished relationship and this is a continuous effort that needed to be done over some period of time. Despite the difficult challenges, penetrating the social media is worth it. Success user of the new media can then focus in communicating to respectable audience effectively and efficiently.

There are several tactics and technique that can be applied which based on common sense approaches and they are; to test the social media beforehand, to plan each event just like in the traditional media, identify each specific type of social media that needed for certain communication, to constantly monitor the used and desired social media, and last but not least, to respect and carefully approach your audience and remember that you are dealing with human behind every computer screen.

In launching social media campaign, practitioner must be all translucent as not to hide any essential information for the audience, as to also maintain a long term social media campaign. Social media campaign will never happened over night. The right thing to do is to always keep a database for any follow-on campaign.

There are more than results in building social media audience. Practitioner need to understand the flexibility of social media and one need to be prepared of changing the conventional way of how things are done. Essential changes can happen in split seconds. There are little different between the traditional and new media, the most important thing that should always be in the practitioner mind is that now, the practitioner are now loaded with any conventional gatekeeper responsibilities.

Taken from: http://www.online-pr.com/Holding/PR_and_Social_media.pdf

Reviewd by Mohd Siddek Arif Saleh ( 2009520841)