Social Media Changed the Practice of Public Relations

Technology and new channels, particularly social media, changed the way public relations is practiced. More and more organizations and agencies are utilizing various social media vehicles as a cornerstone of their public relations efforts. Many of today’s social media vehicles that serve as “news” sources can be created and delivered as uncensored, unfiltered commentary or opinion by anyone.

A Statista.com study reported there were around 350 million blogs from Tumblr alone. Some research suggests there are over 75 million websites (and blogs) combined on the WordPress platform. Research by Pew found that news-oriented blogs share the most similarities with the mainstream press.

This is just blogs; when you begin to account for the social network sites and other social media vehicles, it is easy to see how the nature and number of vehicles create challenges for public relations practitioners. The PRSA is the largest US association of PR and communications professionals. They believe that “social media has changed the world of PR and it’s for the better.”

Social Media and Traditional Methods Should Work Together

Social media is not a replacement for traditional public relations channels. They are a viable way to augment your communication efforts. In many organizations, employees throughout the organization incorporate work into their social media communication. As a result, it’s easy for social media to take on a life of its own. By harnessing the energy of your stakeholders who choose to share company information and provide content to bloggers, it’s important to realize that this communication needs to be part of your overall Public Relations, Reputation Management, and Customer Communication strategy.

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5 Best Practices to Ensure Your Social Media Supports Your Overall Messaging

The last thing you want to do is confuse your customers, partners, employees, and other key stakeholders. That’s easy to do if your social media is not in synch your overall communications efforts. In working with public relations practitioners, we have found that the best employ these best practices:

1. Be strategic: The integration of social media into your public relations should be a strategic decision. Rather than dabbling arbitrarily and taking a random approach, your experiments should be based on the objectives you’re trying to achieve and support the strategy of your public relations initiatives. Monitor and track the results so you can assess what is enabling you to achieve your objectives.
2. Be consistent: The company profiles and content should reflect the organization’s key message map and presence. Whether online or offline, the positioning and messaging strategy should be consistent across all media. Different profiles, messaging, etc., can create confusion among stakeholders. Make sure everyone who participates in social media that shares company information understands the key messages and message map.
3. Listen and engage: Social media is about creating conversations. Traditional public relations vehicles were often push vehicles where the “sender” or “company” utilized credible third parties to “spread the word.” Social media is just as much about listening and talking. This means your public relations strategy needs to include both what you are going to share and also how you are going to listen, engage, and respond to posts and comments. Plan on how you will use and analyze the data you collect.
4. Share valuable information: Public relations addresses reputation management. If you wanted to be considered a trusted source, then share relevant industry information, such as trends, best practices, and so on that will be valuable to your followers and readers.
5. Monitor and manage: The nature of social media makes it possible for people to talk about your product or company anytime. Therefore, you will need a way to monitor what people are saying about your company, products, and people. Research and evaluate the variety of media monitoring tools available.

Public relations and communication professionals know how important it is to be consistent in your messaging and image. This applies whether the channel is online or offline. Using social media for public relations is a strategic decision and requires the appropriate investment of time and resources.

Because it is extremely easy for many members of your organization to participate in the social media conversation, we highly recommend creating and enforcing a social media policy. Start with these three elements.

Three Elements for Your Social Media

Your social policy should at a minimum address these areas:

Purpose
As you develop your policy, keep in mind the purpose of your social media efforts. Clarify the purpose of your social media and remember that readers will span numerous audiences (including current and past customers, current and previous employees, suppliers, channel partners, etc.), those intended and those not intended. Be as positive as you can in the tone of your policy.

Social media is about engagement, so the traditional restrictions approach to policy writing doesn’t transfer well to this channel. Craft your policy to encourage collaboration, connecting, and engagement.

Content
Be clear about what things employees and others can and cannot do or say, with the focus on not alienating any readers or divulging any confidential information. Clarify who is responsible for what is written. Your organization and its representatives need to take responsibility for what they write. So be sure to include the need for content writers to exercise good judgment, what that means, and how content outside the policy will be handled. Set your policy so that slurs, demeaning, or inflammatory comments will not be allowed and will be deleted. Be authentic about who is contributing the content, be willing to provide the company name, and title information.

Social media is about creating communities of trust. Also, be sure to respect copyrights and other protected material. Be clear about the consequences for breaches of confidential information. Employees who share confidential or proprietary information should know they do so at the risk of losing their jobs and possibly even ending up as defendants in a civil lawsuit.

Usage
Make sure the policy indicates that the company will monitor employee use of social media and social networking websites, even if they are engaging in social networking or social media use away from the office. It’s important the contributors are coached in balancing personal and professional information and the important role that transparency plays in building a community.

For an example of a well-defined social media policy, follow this link to IBM’s posted policy.

Be sure you have integrated your social media activities into your overall plan and that you’re applying your message map to ALL your company sanctioned social media tactics. No message map?  We can help with that.

FAQ:

1. Be strategic: Integrate social media into PR intentionally—based on objectives and PR strategy (not random experimentation). Monitor and track results to evaluate what is working.
2. Be consistent: Ensure profiles and content reflect the organization’s key message map and presence. Messaging and positioning should be consistent across online and offline channels. Make sure participants understand the message map.
3. Listen and engage: Social media is conversational. PR strategy must include what you will share and how you will listen, engage, and respond. Plan how you will collect, analyze, and use the data.
4. Share valuable information: Reputation is strengthened by being a trusted source. Share relevant industry information—trends, best practices, and insights that help your audience.
5. Monitor and manage: Because conversations happen anytime, establish a way to monitor what people say about your company, products, and people. Research and evaluate media monitoring tools.

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