Traditional media channels are no longer the only means by which large audience can be reached. CEO’s post video directly to YOUTUBE. Executives communicate directly to customers and other stakeholders through blogs
These days it seems that every company or individual – is navigating the new communication landscape and experimenting with blogs, video and custom publishing. In this regard, we are all content producers.
A key requirement for corporate communications in the new age is a centralized system for managing all activities, contacts, news, collateral, analyses, reports and communication. This provides essential information to shape and continuously improve results, and allow communication professionals to focus on more strategic activities that will have greater impact on the organization.
Powerful new technology exists that transform the field of corporate communications. In fact, new applications of technology in the corporate communications realms streamline every aspect of a professionals’ job from list building to news distribution and monitoring to measuring results. As once manual tasks are automated, those who embrace these new innovations discover nothing leas than dramatic time savings, more communication among internal teams and with their outside agencies, enhanced media relations, and a higher quality and quantity of coverage.
Below are some of the positive effects when embracing new media in the field of public relations and corporate communication:
- Social media has revolutionized corporate communications. Social media marketing allows companies to communicate directly and instantly with their stakeholder, marking a shift from the traditional one-way output of corporate communications, to an expanded dialogue between company and consumer.
Social media marketing is an umbrella term that includes the use of social media for sales, marketing, customer service and public relations, indicating a convergence of these traditionally separate corporate departments. Social media consists of online technologies, practices or communities that people use to generate content and share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with each other.
Examples include blogs (Blogger), intranets, post-casts, video sharing (YouTube), social network (e.g. Facebook, MySpace), wikis (e.g Wikipedia), gaming sites, virtual worlds, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-conferencing. In the last decade these technologies have arisen in popularity and being utilized by PR practitioners to influence the ever-changing industry of corporate communication.
- Electronic publishing. Communicators are increasingly looking to implement or replace their print publications because of the significant advantages in the areas of speed and cost of delivery. Electronic publishing is used more often to communicate with employees and customers.
- Content and conversations. With the changes in technologies, content remains the primary focus of communicators and its their main tool for informing and influencing audiences. The content is king and the conversation is queen. The organization as a conversation is an emerging area of interest to many communication executives and training professionals alike.
- Communication employees in a long way. Rather then post and sent out large quantum of paper-based announcements, a single e-mail message could be sent to all employees at the same time, regardless of their geographic location. E-mail has the ability to alert every employee once a communication is sent. At the time, e-mail was the biggest advancement in corporate communication.
Social media marketing is a revolutionary tool that has quickly changed the ways in which public relations is practiced becoming an integral part corporate communications for many companies. Social media offers publics relations practitioners new options for every aspect of the corporate communication process. From research to evaluation, social media tools can be utilized to create and distribute meaningful content to wider audiences than traditional media allows.
Public relations is no longer about inundating news room with news releases and media alerts. While traditional media still matters, practitioners need to know how to design their messages for new audiences.
Social media offers opportunities for interactive news releases that can be pitched on the Web, to bloggers rather than journalist. Evaluation has changed as well, with social media tools offering new opportunities for measuring the effectiveness of communications. The success of public relations campaign or program is no longer measured solely by the weight of newspaper clippings, but by the number of blogs posts, conversations, comments, bookmarks, etc that it garnered online.
- Social media is about engaging and developing direct one-to-one relationships with individuals. Typically, the PR and communication teams in an organization are already doing this with many audiences (journalist, analysts, investors and other influencers). Given this, the communication team already has many of the skills and expertise required to build relationships via Twitter, Face-books and other social media platforms.
- Corporate communications and PR often own content that is ideal for sharing on social networks. For instance, these departments will have news they can break to their online communities, they’ll know about informative articles they can link to, or they’ll be involved in the creation of video.
- Corporate communication/PR needs to have a direct handle on how the company is perceived. Social media provide immediate access to this information. Thoughtful and well-managed engagement on social media platforms can provide tremendous positive image for a company.
In today’s corporate world, the success or failure of any company hinges on public perception. The opinions of key company stakeholders, such as shareholders, investors and consumers, employers or members of the community in which the organization is based, are all crucial to the long-term success of the company, and should be viewed as such by executives. Social media allows for corporate communications opportunities that a decade would not have been be possible.
Public relations is an old industry that has relied on the same tactics and formulas for much of its history, and that has traditionally been measured by the amount of media coverage resulting from output company messages.
Social media is rapidly changing the way that public relations changing the way that public relations campaigns or programs are distributed and measured.
Rather that the traditional method of pure output – completely company controlled messages being broadcast to the stakeholders – social media has forced corporate communications to shift to a dialogue in which the stakeholders, and not just the companies, have power over the message. Social media allows stakeholders to ask questions and have those questions answered directly by corporate executives, and for corporate executives to receive important feedback and even ideas from their stakeholders
Public relations in the traditional sense has come to be seen by many as “smoke and mirrors,” deceptive messages being created by “spin doctors”. Because of this, many people have come to distrust media – the traditional means by which the industry in measured – and put most trust in the opinions of the peers, which they have access to on social media sites. Social media not only offers an opportunity for direct and instant corporate communication, but also an opportunity to get back to the ideal basics of public relation – building and maintaining relationships – and to change some of the negative stereotypes typically associated with the industry.