New Media, New Influencers & Implications for Public Relations by Society and New Communication Research

Technology is design for instrumental action that reduces the uncertainty in the cause-effect relationship involved in achieving a desired outcome. It is where the importance of new media technology seen very clearly nowadays, which may be proactive process and cannot be ignored especially by Public Relations and Marketing professionals. According to the article by Society and New Communication Research (2008), a recent survey of nearly 300 public relations, corporate and marketing communications professionals experienced in social media, fifty-seven percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable to the practice.  

In the new media development and execution phase, it is important to determine which new media tools and tactics that appropriate for an individual or organization. A survey shows public relations professionals rank blogs, video sharing and social networks as the three most effective channels of new media communications. The most successful new media programs often start small and often evolve into larger and broader activities. 

There are three major steps required for an organization to embarking on a new media program which are outline all strategies, set goals, and prepare for possible outcomes. The earliest two steps enable an organization to correct misinformation, discuss, and use the power of two-way communications from new media to reach the goals. The third step is essential to ensure success.

Apart from having new media as the key to ensure success, it is also one of the best ways to recruit audience especially the influencers. As given from this article, key influencer characteristics can be as simple as a blogger passionate about your service or product or as complicated as how often one comments on a blog and the length of their post. If you are starting small, a simple blog search and review of a blogger bio may provide the necessary information to identify key influencers.   

In a nutshell, new media technology is changing the landscape of public relations in various ways. First one is shifting from one way PR communications to two or multi-ways conversations. Then, new media has also affected how PR professional engage and interact with the traditional media reporter. Lastly, as more new media tools and techniques emerge, it enable PR practitioner to expand reach of messages and programs to the mass audience.

Source:

http://sncr.org/sites/default/files/documents/tip%20sheets/SNCR_New_Influencers_Tip_Sheet.pdf

Reviewed by Nor Azila bt Mazlah @ Mazlan (2009740421)

Twitter as a rescue to Dominos PR Disaster

The use of new social media is vital for an organisation to reach their consumers needs today.  The reality is businesses are desperately trying to find ways to interact and engage customers in the process of perfecting their products and services as this tactic will assure customer loyalty, and ultimately gain massive profits.  It is also one of the best ways in managing crisis whenever the organisation been hit by the disaster that may lead to bad views from the public.  This method was used by Dominos public relation team when they faced shocking experience when two of Dominos employees doing revolting things and has been spread all over the Youtube viewers.  After receiving negative views on quality of Domino Pizza, the CEO reached out to their customers via Twitter asking for feedback on what is the ways that company can regain the customers trust due to the incident.  Besides that, he spends huge time and much energy to get the customers respond on how they can improve their services and choice of pizza.  We can see this is another unique business trick when the CEO choose the new media as a bridge to reach out its customers and the best solution what we can see how Dominos has achieve their business goal today. 

What the CEO did is right.  When they have trouble with their customers trust, they go straight away to them.  They communicated directly which make the customers feels appreciated.  Moreover, it is a brilliant idea to grab the opportunity in using new media social networking when we know it is today’s trend and any issue is spreads immediately in the social media like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.  Thus, they visibly make the customers as the priority in business when they directly listening to their customers demand in order to improve their quality of pizza based on the customer’s experiences.  Furthermore, Dominos public relation team work so hard in facing the positive and negative impact on the spot and not leaving the customers to make much more assumption about the incident when they come out video response from the company later after the incident.  It is relevant by today scenario to use new social networking media to gain good customers relationship and listen about what they want.  They react positively about the issue when they sign up for twitter account which has over 1200 followers since the incident happened.  By using these new media technologies, Dominos itself open their wide opportunity when they give responses and allowed their customers to talk about the issue openly.

Sources

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/editors-blog/2009/04/dominos-creates-twitter- accoun.html

Reviewed by Nabila Farahanah Zulkefli - 2009178883