Twitter as a Public Relations Tools

Public relations is a field concerned with maintaining public image for  high profile people, businesses and organizations, non-profit organizations or programs. Other define as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its public. Public relations provide an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that provide a third-party endorsement. (Grunig & Todd, 1984).

There are various tools that can be used by public relations practitioner in practice of their field. Nowadays, most companies are utilizing interactive social media as tools in their public relations campaigns. Unlike the traditional tools which only allowed only one way of communication, the social media allows companies to engage in two way communication and receive immediate feedback from their audiences.

Twitter, one of the social media nowadays has become one of the Public Relations tools because of the increase in Twitter use is outstanding and quite overwhelming. Public Relations sees as using Twitter as a public relations tool is now more significant than ever as Twitter is rounding up more users. According to the researchers, Twitter is not the only social media tool that allows public relations practitioners to reach their audiences, but the short, instant structure is new and useful. The real-time, one-on-one conversation is unprecedented in social media. The opportunity to instantly connect with an audience and often receive a rapid response offers a new way to communicate

The nature of Twitter communications provides public relations practitioners with the ability to create a conversation and a relationship with their audience in real-time. Botan and Taylor (2004) discussed the basic definition of public relations as relationship building. While industry professionals use this method to communicate directly with their target audiences as respondents discussed, an unexpected relationship-building opportunity with the media has grown out of the Twitter environment. This connection to the media provides an entrée into the journalism community that public relations professionals lacked in the past. Twitter provides the ability to respond directly to media requests and offer suggestions for articles that put their client’s names into the public’s eye.

Taken from : http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Documents/2011Evans.pdf

Reviewed by: Muhammad Bunyamin b. Mohd Nordin  2009140973