w6r

Stakeholder relations and social media within public relations plays a special role for businesses. With such a wide and quick access to what seems like a limitless amount of people would be foolish not for a business to capitalize on. In addition, with so many people potentially talking about your company, wouldn't you find it necessary to constantly know what is being said? It is poor public relations, forget about social media, but overall for you not to be on the cusp of what's happening regarding your client.

According to a study published by Burson Marsteller in 2011, 84% of Fortune 100 companies are using at least one of the four most popular social media platforms including: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or corporate blogs. These statistics are a clear indication of the direction social media in regards to public relations is headed.

The integration of social media to a public relations campaign can offer an interactive element in a much more user-friendly and cost efficient way. Facebook fans can comment and like what you clients posts, Twitter followers can retweet news/announcements/links, and YouTube users and blog followers can comment on videos and text. This option to engage your audience can be done quickly and affectively to aid public relations campaign or just ongoing client relations in general.

Employees can share with friends and family newsworthy happenings at their company, helping one's social media efforts turn viral. In addition, by creating stakeholder-specific social media accounts and outreach, your client can personally address key publics. For example, a company which employs hundreds of individuals would benefit from a monthly or bimonthly CEO blog where the head of the company can personally address his or her employees. In addition, by spotlighting a valued employee or consumer once in a while can also add a personalized element to a large corporation. By executing both of these ideas via social media outlets, it can ensure everyone is easily reached and gets the message. In addition, these examples can engage key publics in a positive way and motive employees in a very short time needed to create the messages.

w5o

            Social media has influenced the way we communicate without a doubt. However, by adding real time updates like Twitter, for example, to our top outlets, has changed the way we receive breaking news more importantly. When Twitter first gained popularity as a form of microblogging, it was viewed as a professional tool for journalists and news outlets given its real-time feature. Its popularity quickly spread as being a useful site to be participate in despite one’s age or profession.

            Although today Twitter has millions of registered users for business and personal use, the way it has aided the news profession has been the most heavily impacted. Breaking news of events has been able to start trending on twitter to reach the masses in a matter of minutes. For example, I was on twitter when I got word of the death of Osama Bin Laden, which then prompted me to the twitter page of CNN. Spreading word of such prominent news for our country was able to happen in such a short period of time and allowed me to tune into CNN on television to get the full story of what had happened. Updates from people in Washington, DC during this time were also helpful in sharing their stories of how many rushed to the White House to spread their patriotism and emotions for the events that were taking place.

            Additionally, with so many being connected via Twitter, even the President of the United States, citizens can trust to be receiving reliable information. Social media has become an outlet for virtually any demographic to engage in, despite location, profession, age or race. Sharing news, insight, opinions and ideas is now so easy and even free, provided to appropriate tools. 

w5r

          Microblogging has emerged as a new and even faster way to connect with others via social media. Twitter as the most well known outlet for microblogging is now fulfilling this role of the “world wide talk show” according to the “Twitter Handbook” written by Deborah Micek and Warren Whitlock. Ironically enough, this world wide communication phenomenon has limited us to just 140 characters. The handbook points out what makes twitter and microblogging overall so unique to the social media world, “Twitter is all about SPEED and PARTICIAPTING in the CONVERSAITION.” By becoming an active tweeter, your company, brand, etc is now connected with an unlimited audience in a speed that was never before possible.

            Despite its short and sweet nature of sharing brief thoughts, Twitter is anything but simple. Much thought is put behind the 140 character updates that companies produce. Beginning with the username, it is crucial for the name of one’s Twitter page to be easily accessible from a mobile phone (where much of tweeting originates from), meaning no symbols should be included. Additionally, using your brand as the twitter username ensures you to be as easy to find when searched as possible. Clearly stated in the “Twitter Handbook,” “the key is to be remembered.”

            Also important to attracting followers and developing your brand on twitter, besides creating a simple and relevant username, is to personalize your page as much as possible. Immediately add a photo when you register as well as customize the background and color scheme of the text will attract others to following and engaging with you.

            Obtaining followers for your brand is important and can be accomplished by being proactive and following people you think would be worthwhile to follow you back or to start a tweet conversation with others. However, once you get others to follow you, you need to keep them as well. By adding value to their twitter feed you can ensure not only that you will keep your followers but that they will spread your page to their followers as being of interest to many. 

w4o

Nancy Hicks of Ketchum's, "Health E Minds Healthcare Commentary" discusses an interesting concept to the healthcare field in her article, "Medical Schools Screen Applicants for Charm Factor." Top medical schools across the country are introducing new criteria to their incoming classes of future doctors. Strong communication skills are now on the list of top priorities for doctors to possess and prestigious schools like Stanford and UCLA are making sure their doctor's have all the necessary skills. 

A new process of interviewing students called Multiple Mini Interviews, in which potential students essentially speed date recruiters at the average length of eight minutes for each session. The reasoning behind the creation of this new, unique interviewing process is that traditional interviews do not appropriately predict the performance of a student, as well as reflect an individual's communication skills, especially with just one interviewer as the judge. 

Since recent studies show that many preventable deaths occur as a result of poor communications among doctors and other staff members, by changing the requirements to even be admitted into medical school can help drastically decrease these occurrences.  In addition to this, more and more often when one is admitted into a hospital or healthcare clinic it is rare to find that the patient is only dealing with one doctor and/or nurse, there is typically a team or duo at the very least taking care of you. Working individually and only having to report to yourself is not a common work environment in the health field. 

With this in mind, it is also noteworthy to mention how and whom is taking this communication faux pas into consideration and attempting to move forward in the right direction for the healthcare field. This past weekend I was accompanying a dear friend on a trip to Baptist Hospital in South Florida when she suddenly fell ill. While making a trip to a hospital ER is just about as enjoyable as spending all day at your local DMV, this visit was not as torturous as I had envisioned. The nurses who we had initially spoken to were compassionate and understanding, not to mention worked extremely quickly and efficiently, we had been put into a room under a half hour. In addition to this, whenever we were passed onto another staff member, despite having all of my friend's medical information printed out in front of them, they always asked how she was feeling in the moment, if there were any changes, and reiterated her reasons for the visit to ensure correct information. We were both discussing how friendly, personable and professional all of the staff was when a shift supervisor came into her room to review how the care she was receiving was going. He asked if we had any complaints and made sure she was receiving the appropriate care and was in constant communication with her doctors/nurses. 

After reading this article I immediately was brought back to my afternoon spent at Baptist Hospital and how thanks to A+ communication skills, my friend's trip to the ER was as efficient and pleasurable as possible. 

http://health.ketchum.com/blog/medical-schools-screen-applicants-charm-factor 

w4r

The YouTube video, "Social Media Helps Police Catch Burglars"features a new aspect of justice that did not exist before this current social media revolution society is currently in the midst of. Local Police in Boca Raton, FL are finding that posting security footage on social media websites ads well as sending them out via e-mail lists are becoming more and more common, as well ultimately successful in finding criminals.

Websites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have all been allies of the police force in their recent efforts to capture criminals. Not only are social networking sites changing the way we communicate with others, they are now being used in society as social mediators almost, keeping the peace through informing and educating those in your community.

Social media makes targeting a specific community easier than ever. With options on certain sites like Facebook where you can target an update to reach a specific community or network as well as Twitter where localized Twitter pages can retweet to reach a desired audience. Social media is an extremely useful tool for as wide as the federal government to share news as well as a country's police force to find a burglar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBkRj-4gbtY

w3r

The article, "Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media," by Andreas M. Kaplan,  introduces an in-depth view into social media, its forms as well as some insight in the opportunities and challenges of engaging in it. In recent years, social media has seemingly changed the world. The recent explosion of social media is not solely through the contribution of young users, but should be viewed as a mutual interest that has peaked across age demographics. According to Kaplan, "...members of Generation X, now 35-44 years old, increasingly populate the ranks of joiners, spectators, and critics."

Since this revolution of social media has attracted all age groups, it is crucial for businesses to be apart of the trend. However, this is increasingly where we find the challenges becoming more and more common. Although social media offers a way for businesses to reach their consumers at essentially no cost and faster than ever, it also allows their consumer to spread a negative message about them at no cost and faster than ever. Kaplan discusses this further, "...businesses have increasingly less control over the information available about them on cyberspace." One person's negative experience with a company can seriously damage their reputation, especially if its the right person with the right voice. "Historically, companies were able to control the information available about them through strategically placed press announcements and good public relations managers. Today, however, firms have been increasingly relegated to the sidelines as mere observers."

This being said, public relations efforts, especially in the form of social media experts, are more valuable than ever to employ. With savvy PR tactics on the web, a company can easily prevent crises from arising and should they take place, to have a quick and proactive response to them.

w3o

Social Media can often be a tricky resource for individuals, however, what happens to companies when they experience social media gone wrong? If a college student was tagged in an inappropriate picture, we oculd prbably just call up the person who posted it and tell them to take it down, put it on a private view, etc. and eventually any controversy will hopefully pass in due time. But when a company utilizes social media in an unflattering way, the damage is out there and who knows how many have seen it and whose eyes its came across.

In the article, "5 Examples of Social Media Blunders and What to Learn From Them," by Ben Parr this concept is discussed. My favorite example of the list is the controversial video created by Motrin. Clearly, it was a well designed video posted by Motrin in efforts to "connect" with mothers through back, neck and shoulder pain caused by carrying around young children, something all mothers of young children can probably relate to. However, Motrin received a ton of negative backlash from this campaign because of the things it hinted at.

This is a great example of poor social media causing a negative effect on the company. Had Motrin perhaps conducted extensive testing in the forms of focus groups on the video they probably would have noticed it takes the tone of mocking mothers who carry their young children in devices strapped to their bodies.

http://mashable.com/2009/03/08/social-media-blunders/

w2o

Public relations was once a position that was highly regarded. A position in which one acted as an advisory to a big business's CEO is now one with a tarnished reputation, a confusing job and just an overall poor image of the field. How did this happen? It started with a break of trust. Trust is the most important aspect of any business relationship, whether it be from employer to employee, client to company or even company to their public, trust is a necessary part of the business transaction.

Well what could have happened to break this bond of trust? The public started becoming more and more aware of what is going on in the world, all thanks to social media and the current streaming of live information. Being in the know isn't always a positive thing...isn't ignorance bliss? In huge scandals involving companies, celebrities, popular organizations, etc at what price should we be kept in constant communication?

Thankfully, as a result of these scandals and this break of trust many have become aware now more than ever that public relations is necessary in times even when there is not a crisis. By keeping a positive reputation and image an entity is already reducing the damage an issue could do to them.