10.1: Social Media

Using social media has several benefits for businesses. It enables them to:

• attract customers, get customer feedback and build customer loyalty.
• increase market reach, including international markets.
• do market research and reduce marketing costs
• increase revenue by building customer networks and advertising.
• develop your brand.
• exchange ideas to improve the way you do business.
• recruit skilled staff, for example through job networking sites like LinkedIn.
• increase traffic to your website and improve its search engine ranking
• keep an eye on your competitors.

(Business.gov.au)

Much of the above list applies to marketing, not to public relations. That’s not to say social media doesn’t have a role to play in public relations. It does. But it is just one of many tools that the p.r. practitioner has in his toolbox.

The key to successfully using social media to support your public relations strategy is to determine the main goal of your public relations strategy. Next, you’ll want to understand what niche you occupy in your industry and how you can distinguish yourself from your peers and competitors. Then consider who your target audience is, the platforms your target audience engages with most often, and what kinds of content your target audience wants.

For the most part, the target audience for a business is going to be its customers and potential customers; for a politician, the people in his voting district; for a clergyman, people within a reasonable distance of his church, and perhaps especially those who have drifted away. It may sound impressive to say the local brewpub shop has 11 million followers, but it’s much more effective to have a narrow description of the people within a reasonable distance from the brewpub – what is their age, race, income levels, education levels, etc. Much of this demographic data is available for free from the U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov).

When using social media, you’ll want to engage with influencers. Choosing the right influencer is important to your social media strategy. There are three types of influencers:

• social media, the people who engage with and share your social media content. They help extend the reach of your message.
• Reporters with established expertise in your industry. They tend to have a dedicated following that trusts their endorsements – and they have access to publishing platforms which can broadcast your message to their readers. The Whiskey Wash is an example of this. Founded by Nino Kilgore-Marchetti, The Whiskey Wash is a blog that has developed a dedicated following; its founder is trusted – he judges various competitions. The publication has grown to include two columnists, also experts; a reporter, and 13 reviewers. The publication has advertising support and is free to readers.
• Third-party influencers are people with expertise in the field who are frequently cited by media. They aren’t associated with your company or the media, but associating with this type of influencer can lend credibility to your messaging;

Influencers are important because they can increase the reach and impact of your messages by improving their visibility and credibility.

Just like with a blog, you need to post your social media messages on a regular schedule.

Setting a Social Media Strategy

Public relations practitioners should be the primary people involved in developing an organization’s brand. Many people think of an organizations visual symbol – Ford’s blue oval, the red cross in a white circle for the American Red Cross, Howard University’s Blue letters on a white background with a touch of red, West Point’s black and gold, Indiana University’s trident, Bowie Stare University’s wordmark and flame – as its brand. But a brand is much more than that. It summarizes how people feel about an organization and what they expect from it.

Why should public relations people be the primary people in developing a brand? When it comes to brand management, public relations has two roles:

• It creates the narrative, i.e., the conversation
• And it is the purveyor of the medium to facilitate the conversation; i.e., social media.

Since 2000, there has been a marked decline in the trust consumers have in business. That means word-of-mouth among consumers is more important than ever, and given the rise of social media brand conversations now take place not just among neighbors but in some cases people thousands of miles away. To deal with this decline in trust, leaders are turning to the concept of authenticity, which at least one scholar believes should come from public relations because story telling is part of the public relations practitioners tool kit.

Social media is diametrically opposite the traditional one-way, sender-oriented marketing and advertising protocol, in which a message does not occur unless the sender (the advertiser or marketer) wishes it to happen. Now, the conversations take place regardless of what the advertiser or marketer wishes. The proliferation of television channels and niche publications, the fact that 24-hour news is just a click away, and the growth of the internet means organizations have no place to hide, They have to be ready to rebut damaging stories and they must make sure their message gets across.

How important is this? A recent study by Harris on the top 200 companies on Fortune’s most-admired companies list spent twice as much as those in the bottom 200.

Plainly, public relations is important to both brand strategy and to building and sustaining corporate reputations. A successful public relations strategy involves four elements:

1. Identify the various attributes and characteristics of the brand—its values and supporting behaviors, its positioning and identity. Then determine how important these are to an organization’s culture and opportunities for motivating performance. Only then can a public relations platform be built on a brand’s characteristics and promise.

2. The perception of external stakeholders must be assessed. This should extend beyond products to include things that drive reputation, such as leadership, innovation, financial value, quality of management and corporate citizenship.

3. Corporate communications should use the brand’s attributes and characteristics internally to inform employees of the company’s position on different issues. This should be done to support change initiatives, underscore credibility in crisis and guide behavior.

4. An annual, measurable public relations plane should be created, anchored by the brand promise with the objective of shaping key audiences’ perception of leadership, customer connections, marketplace innovation and corporate responsibility.

References

Business.gov.au. (2022 May 2) Social media for business. Business.Australia. https://business.gov.au/online/social-media-for-business

Mikacova, L., Gavlakova, P. (2014). The ole of public relations in branding. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 110 (2014) 832-840. Elsevier.

Richards, M. (2020). How to choose the right influencer for your communications strategy. Public Relay. https://www.publicrelay.com/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-influencer-for-your-communications-strategy/

PRACTICAL EXERCISE – Questions to Ponder

What do you consider the primary attributes and characteristic of the Walt Disney brand?

Now, consider this: While a bill restricting instruction about sexual orientation was working its way through the Florida legislature, Walt Disney Co. was silent. Its LGBTQ employees weren’t however; Many took to social media to criticize the company for its silence. Nonemployee joined in on the Disney bashing. On the very day Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law Bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO, called for repeal of the law.

From a public relations perspective, do you believe Chapek’s action helped or hurt Disney Co.’s image and why?

A bit more that a month later, Gov. DeSantis signed another bill – this one eliminating the Reedy Creek Improvement District and five other special districts. Reedy Creek operated like a county – it set its own taxes, maintained its own police and fire department, approved Disney’s plans to expand Walt Disney World, etc.

Do you think most Floridians supported Gov. DeSantis or the Disney Co. in this dispute? Why?

Do you think corporate CEOs should speak out on the issues of the day that have no immediate connection to their company’s business interests?

Do you think Chapek was wise to bend to the will of some of his employees? Why or why not?

Do you think this dispute hurt the image of the Walt Disney Co. Why or why not?

A few weeks after this, the Disney Co. board fired Chapek and reinstalled Bob Iger who had been CEO..