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

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)

Air Asia

          Having a dedicated and a visionary CEO, AirAsia seem to be driving itself to a well performing volatility. In articulation of this fundamental performance, the low cost airline are utilizing the presence of the new media as one of the key factors that facilitate its business operation especially in the marketing site.

          

         Sited from AirAsia’s official website, it is stated that AirAsia’s facebook fanpage has more than 190,000 fans currently and making a record of being the first airline with 100,000 fans on facebook. Realizing the need of disseminating messages in the fastest way and able to reach a widely audiences, this airline really taking it seriously when it comes to the use of new media in their marketing strategies. The fanpage constantly updates on new promotions, discussion and notes shared by both employees and fans.

        

         Apprehended in becoming the pioneer of using new media, AirAsia has also created a link to twiter on the fanpage, inviting its fans to follow the company on Twitter for the latest news and deal updates. Currently, AirAsia’s twitter account has more than 20,000 followers which could be very positive and promising.  

           

         Not only facebook and twitter , AirAsia also up level itself to be the best among rest of its competitors by blogging their current updates and informations. This approach of blogging started in July28, 2008. The features include in this blog varies from contained travel-related stories and announcements posted by readers and employees.

           

           Not only focusing on positive feedback, in the use of blog, AirAsia also entertain constructive criticisms pertaining to their operation and customer service. This practice of exploitation of the new media especially the social network, proves in creating a platform for AirAsia to react and respond quickly  to customer’s displeasure, thus engaging and establishing a better relationship with its customers.

http://www.etravelblackboard.com/article/130320/airasia-no1-on-twitter

http://www.airasia.com/my/en/followuson.page

MOHAMAD FADHIL BIN MOHAMMAD FAHROZI

New media technologies and Public Relations

New media is becoming the preferred term for a range of media practices that employ digital technologies and the computer in some way or another.  The new media as a general definition, refers to innovating forms of interaction between people and technology, is about the relationship between people and instruments of communication. Examples of new media: blogs, video games, virtual worlds, Wikipedia or any mobile device, interactive televisions and even sites and emails.

Consideration will be given to both the impact on skills, knowledge and work practices of current and future practitioners and the way new media is consumed and used, including the impact that related expectations and behavior of consumers is having on public relations practice. New technologies are being developed and updated continuously and in themselves pose challenges for public relations professionals in terms of keeping abreast of not only what is available but also of what is being planned for release in the future. Many large scale public relations projects such as national public information campaigns or major international events have long lead times.

If new media are to be embraced, public relations practitioners will need more technical skills in areas such as web publishing, new software operation, online security, search engine optimization, web analytics and web trend analysis software operation. They will need enhanced online information architecture skills and skills related to managing an increasing amount of complex information digitally. Writing for cross-media delivery will continue as a major component of practice but the demands for multimedia elements will bring even more challenges in this area.

If new media is already a part of your daily life, promote what you are doing, demonstrate the results that these campaigns deliver, and continue to innovate. As a result your organisations, clients and teams will all benefit, and the PR sector will be rightly seen as the natural champions of new media communications.

Reviewed by Izzati Suhaila

An Analysis of Governments’ Use of Interactive Media as a Global Public Relations Strategy

The existence of new media is an eye-opener to the Government to use the tools in communicating directly to the publics. Compared to traditional media, Internet-based interactive media have more advantages to incorporate visual and innovative items such as interactive maps, games, and Podcasts. In the context of national government websites, this research observed that governments develop many features on their online portals and utilize these features to communicate specially with foreign online visitors.

Dialogic communication is used as modern strategic of public relations. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, dialogue communication is informed and continual information of the previous or multiple works. Practically, public relations practitioners are expected to use dialogic strategies and to provide counsel. These fundamental discussions of dialogic communication have grown rapidly because of the development of the World Wide Web and other communication technologies.

The nature of Internet media has increased the interactions between organizations and home and host stakeholders, and interactive media enhanced the communication and relationship-building and functions of public relations practitioners. However, this research further illustrated, the online communication practices of national governments in every continent examining the differences by the regions of the world. Overall, Oceania and North America are the top-two countries for all three political and socioeconomic, followed by Europe, Latin America, and Asia. This result may imply that countries in developed countries practice global public relations more effectively than those in developing countries.

From a global public relations perspective, the empowerment of public opinion is the evolution of public relations as a strategic organizational function that aims at building relationships, gain understanding, collaboration, and community nationally and globally. In addition, this study is a further examination of the impact of cultural differences on the global public relations practices, as well as democratic values and principles. For example, participation, equality, and transparency based on pluralism and open-market systems are the essential elements of a democratic society; the enhanced two-way communication in allowing public opinion.

From the perspective of Malaysian Government, we can see the effort of the Prime Minister to apply the new media as a medium for two-way communication; by using Facebook, Twitter etc. Whether the usage of new media is giving a positive impact to the Government, share your opinion on this matter.

Source: http://www.prsa.org/intelligence/prjournal/documents/2011kimmolleda.pdf

Reviewed by Mirdalinie Bt. Mohamed

2009971209