The Perceptions of Senior Public Relations Practitioners in Namibia on the Use of Social Media as a Public Relations Tool

This post is on my dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management, University of Stirling in 2010. 

The study attempted to establish the perceptions of senior public relations practitioners on social media as a public relations tool and the use of social media by organisations in Namibia. The primary intention of the research was to investigate the use of social media in Namibia and the intention was motivated by the assumption that social media was not widely used as a public relations tool in Namibia and also because there was limited or no research on the use of social media by Namibian organisations and what exactly they used it for.  

For the full dissertation, click here.  

BP, The Oil And Gas Industry And Its Reputation

There is no doubt that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has affected the reputation of oil giant, BP. But to what extend?


Will the damage to its reputation lead to a poor balance sheet? Will it lead to bankruptcy, taking into account the lawsuits, fines, compensation and the cost of the oil clean-up operation which so far has cost close to £2.7 billion (U$4 billion)? The potential spill liabilities is estimated to reach £25.25 billion (U$37billion). Will it lead to a takeover? I don’t think so.

Firstly, there aren’t many oil companies, meaning there’s not much choice for consumer really. Secondly, I don’t know if the majority of consumers really care about which brand they use when filling up their cars with petrol. Thirdly, BP is an established company which suffered several problems (although not to this magnitude) a few years back, such as the Texas City oil refinery explosion in 2005 in which 15 people were killed. Fourthly, BP is a global company and there’s no doubt it will survive this terrible crisis.

This sort of crisis doesn’t only affect the company involved, but the oil industry as a whole which has long suffered a bad reputation due these kind of crises (environmental damage) and the high price of oil and gas which keeps increasing every year.

According to the Reputation Institute’s Global Pulse U.S. Study of 2008 which looks at corporate reputation rankings, oil and gas companies had the lowest corporate reputation rankings among U.S companies.

According to the Oil Spill Intelligence Report, there have been an estimated 4100 oil spills (involving more than 10 000 gallons) around the world. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef in Alaska in 1989 is considered as one of the biggest oil spills and biggest environmental disasters in the world, having spilled an estimated 10.8 million gallons (40.9 million litres) of crude oil.

Such crises are inevitable and bitterly expected, just as is expected of faulty car parts in the motoring industry....Human error and technological error!

When such crises occurs, it is not only the affected company that should look at finding solutions to avoid them occuring in future, but the respective industry as a whole.

Although the affected company will suffer the most in terms of its corporate image and reputation, the crisis puts a terrible mark on the industry as a whole. Thus, it is important that BP gets the support of all other oil and gas companies in its efforts to seal the leak and clean up the Gulf.

Broadcast Online Communication

By Toivo Mvula

My Twitter Experience

By Toivo Mvula

I’ve been a twitterer since early 2009, but I only really started using it actively when I came to the UK (Scotland) for my postgraduate studies.

Joining and using Twitter is compulsory for the Digital Media module for the MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management course at the University of Stirling.

We were not only required to share our blog posts (another compulsory requirement of the module) with our Twitter followers, but also to learn more about how Twitter works, how best to use it, and its benefits to public relations and communications practitioners.
My followers include entertainers, social media experts, PR associations, politicians, friends, magazines, newspapers and other news media.

For those who don’t know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging and social networking site that allows its users to send and read messages known as tweets. You can read more about Twitter on Wikipedia.

I think the reason why I started using Twitter more and more each and every day was because of the UK elections. I have a great interest in politics (having been a journalist) and since I missed out on Barack Obama’s use of Twitter and other social networking sites during the 2008 U.S Presidential Election, I wanted to experience what it was like and how political parties were using social media to campaign.

Although the UK political parties’ campaigns on Twitter received very little coverage, I think they were still very active, despite their low following.
The media coverage was more about the topics/debates that were ‘trending’ on Twitter and this is what encouraged me to tweet more and more, because I joined the debates, especially the ones relating to the UK elections.

My Twitter statistics are as follows: Following 502 people and organisations; 230 followers; 172 tweets and counting.
I will definitely continue to use Twitter more in the future, because I intend to continue blogging and share my blog posts with my followers and also engage in the discussions that are trending anywhere around the world.

Using Google Analytics

By Toivo Mvula

I have been using Google Analytics (GA) to track the number of followers to my blog.
I have to admit that using it was quite fun and it put a smile on my face everytime I studied the statistics.

Knowing that people were actually reading my blog posts or just checking it out was quite exciting.

It may probably not be an excellent tool, but it certainly does a good job.

Google Analytics collects statistics of visitors visiting a specific website. According to Wikipedia, GA is the most widely used website statistics service with 57 percent of the 10 000 most popular websites currently using it.

Back to my blog statistics, GA indicates that I’ve had 243 visitors since I started blogging in late February, but my visitor count (on my blog) indicates 356 visitors. This is probably because I only started using GA more than a week after I set up my blog.
I’ve had 627 page views since I started blogging.

The average time that visitors spent on the blog was five minutes, which is a clear indication that they read the information on my blog.
The visitors were from 12 different countries, namely the United Kingdom, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda, United States of America, Bahrain, Canada, Russia and Romania among others.
Most of them (81, 4 %) used referral sites to visit the blog. About 16.5 visited the site directly and 2 percent used search engines.

Web analytic tools are very useful not only for measuring website traffic, but also for determining your return on investment (ROI) after the launch of a PR or communication campaign, and also for doing business and market research.

However, some bloggers whose only objective is too make money claim to have millions of visits a month to attract advertisers, but fail to indicate how long the visitors stayed on the site.
Another disadvantage of web analaytic tools is that they don’t indicate whether visitors read or absorbed the information on the website.

But it is still a very useful tool and I will definitely use it in future.

Should You List Your Social Media Skills, Like Using Facebook, On Your CV?

By Toivo Mvula

Several social media experts have commented on the importance of public relations practitioners in mastering social media skills.
Others have stated that there is a social media talent vacuum in the communications field, namely advertising, public relations and marketing.

A study by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) also found that masterial social media was one of the top three issues for public relations practitioners for the next two years.

Many tertiary education institutions offering PR courses heed the call and are now offering social media related modules as part of their courses and established practitioners are applying for short social media course to jump onto the social media bandwagon.

But!

With many employees fired from their work for using Facebook and other social media websites during working hours, is it a good idea for public relations practitioners applying for a job to indicate on their CV that they are knowledgeable in the use of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.?

Mashable reported that 8 percent of US companies dismissed someone for their behaviour on social media sites.

The problem is, not all employers understand the importance and increasing use of social media in public relations, nor do all organisations use or intend to use social media for their communication.
Most employers, if not all, block access to Facebook during working hours and only allow access before work and during lunch hours.

Potential employers might also perceive you as a gossip and, rightly so, see you as a threat to corporate secrets, because social media is a corporate reputation disaster if used incorrectly.

Listing your social media skill may seem like a risk to some, but it is important to do research on the organisation you are applying to, like finding out if they use social media; how they use it and understanding their social media policy.

Even if you don’t list your social media skills on your CV, you can still point it out during the interview and explain to the interviewing panel about the benefits of using social media and how a social media policy can erase their fears of reputation management.

Image by San Francisco Sentinal

Are Mobile Technologies Effective in PR campaigns

By Toivo Mvula

The use of mobile technologies in PR campaigns has remained stagnant, partly because the mobile phone is a personal tool and organisations have not yet found an acceptable way of communicating with mobile phone users without being seen as invading their personal space.


The use of mobile technologies in PR campaigns is largely limited to incorporating the internet, because using text messaging (SMS or Short Message Service) is seen as rather intrusive.

Other types of mobile technologies are laptops, notebooks and the media tablets such as the new iPad and WePad.
All these can be used to browse the internet, check your e-mail, access your Facebook and Twitter accounts and other social networking sites, watch YouTube and other video sharing sites.

The mobile phone is the seventh mass media after print, recordings, cinema, radio, television and the internet.

With more than four billion mobile phone users across the globe, the potential of using mobile phones in PR campaigns is huge.
Other advantages of mobile phones is that they are always switched on and users carry them 24 hours, 7 days a week.

Public relations practitioners can use mobile phones in PR campaigns the same way they use internet. The only difference is that everything should be customised to mobile phone specificiations to allow for easy acess and use.
This can be done by:

- purchasing a .mobi domain name to create a mobile website;
- developing Apps for mobile phones;
- launching a mobile website blog; using text messaging (SMS);
- RSS feeds;
- conducting surveys;
- have 24/7 contact to the media; and
- accessing social media to monitor public opinion and respond accordingly.

What is really important is that PR practitioners recognise the potential of mobile phones and other technologies and incorporate them into their traditonal PR campaign strategies to achieve the maximum outcome.
For more information, you can read a PR Week article on the use of mobile technologies in the PR industry.

Wikipedia and Online Reputation Management

By Toivo Mvula

The internet has given public relations practitioners many tools to use to communicate with an organisation’s internal and external publics, the media and other stakeholders.

These tools range from emails, websites, blogs, social networking sites, and search engines among others.
One tool that seems to have been largely ignored is the wiki.

Although some companies use wiki for internal communication, only about 18 percent of public relations practitioners use wiki for public relations purposes.

Wikis are websites with pages that can be edited by any visitor. Wikipedia is the most popular wiki and currently ranks high on the search results of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Hickerson and Thompson believe that wiki websites creates the potential for dialogical communication (public relations) for organisations and their publics.
However, many public relations practitioners regard wiki websites as posing a great risk for corporate reputation management.

If any person can edit a wiki page with information that is believed to be the truth about an organisation, then what influence remains for public relations practitioners?
The low use of wikis in public relations could be an indication that the risks outweight the benefits of using them to communicate and developing relationships with publics, especially the external public.

A study by DiStaso, Messner and Stacks examining Wikipedia’s implications for corporate reputation managment found that ten Fortune 500 companies Wikipedia pages was largely netural, but almost 40 percent of the content was either positive or negative.

In most cases, organisations are not responsible for creating their wiki pages on for example Wikipedia.
But internet users do not know this. The wiki pages look like they are part of the organisation because they have links to company websites and use real company logos.

Although PR practitioners are reluctant to use wikis for communication, they need to monitor what is being said about their organisations on Wikipedia and other wikis.
If any person can edit wiki pages, then PR practitioners can also edit the wrong information on their organisation’s wiki page.

This will prove to be even more difficult, especially due to the fact that Wikipedia is now even more multilingual with over 100 active language editions and reaching over 50 million users a day, which makes it hard for a PR practitioner to know what has been edited on an organisation’s page in all language editions.

Still, if they simply ignore it, internet users will regard the information as the truth.

Whose Responsibility is Social Media? PR or Marketing?

By Toivo Mvula

Why am I even asking this question?

Why can marketing and public relations not just get along?

Why can they not just be integrated into one?

First, we have public relations (PR) practioners claiming that marketers moved into their territory, taking over some PR functions and re-labelling them from for example ‘employee communication’ to ‘internal marketing’ (Gronroos, 1981), ‘crisis communication’ to ‘crisis marketing’ (Marconi, 1992), virtually the whole of ‘public relations’ is now ‘relationship marketing’. (Hutton, cited in Heath).
Then we have marketers who claim that public relations is nothing more than just media relations and publicity.

There are countless battles between these two disciplines, not to mention advertising as well.

Now the battle is on for ‘social media’.  The debate relates to agency partners,  organisational structure and departmental functions.

We have what is now called ‘Social Media Marketing (SMM)’ and ‘PR 2.0’. Both are new terms for marketing and PR activities in the social media arena. However, SMM is much more widely used and in some of its definitions, it include PR as one of its activities.

Another hijacking?
I don’t know, but I believe this whole confusion between PR and Marketing is a sign that both disciplines should be integrated for the benefit of clients and organisations.
It’s already happening, albeit with much resistance, especially from the PR industry who feel, and rightly so, that marketing is engulfing PR.
Who can blame them? Marketing is after all a bigger and established discipline.

Nevertheless, this incredible communication platform which is social media, provides both industries the opportunity to carry out their functions effectively to achieve their campaign objectives. Social media gives marketers the opportunity to reach their customers and attract new ones. And it gives public relations practitioners the opportunity to build and maintain relationships with their stakeholders.

What is important is that PR practitioners and marketers work together to achieve their client or organisations’ campaign objectives.

No one can claim ownership or responsibility for the social media. Social media is an open platform used by anyone, for everyone.

Anyone can be an expert in social media use.

Social Media and Spam

By Toivo Mvula

With many organisations jumping on the social media bandwagon, it will not be a surprise if social media lose its appeal sooner than anticipated.

Social networking sites, such as Myspace, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly being used by organisations to forward promotional messages to users, which can be quite annoying.

This is especially true with Facebook, which has an email/message component to it.
Logging onto your Facebook account and being greeted by a long list of messages from non-friends can be quite annoying.

Spam!

This is why email services have lost their popularity.
And social networking sites could be in danger of being destroyed by it.

With Twitter and RSS feeds for example, if you subscribe to a specific feed, spammers can easily tamper with those feeds to link you to sites that have nothing to do with the feeds you’re interested in.

You can now also find companies offering to hire tweeters to 'blast your link, ad or announcement to 100s of thousands of Twitter followers in an instant'.
We also have celebrities being paid to tweet about products.
That can definitely be regarded as spam.

Spam is already a problem with mobile phones and it is also becoming a problem in blogs.
If you log onto any popular blog, you’re likely to find a number of irrelevant comments with hyperlinks to promotional websites.

The Media and Crises

By Toivo Mvula

Sometimes, individuals use the media to create crises for organisations. Other times, the media create create crises to fulfill their agenda.

Social media makes it even much more easier for anyone with an agenda or vendetta against an individual or an organistion to create a crisis by posting false, but damaging and defamatory information which could be picked up by mainstream media and published as truth, even if such information is not verified.

Most often, these sorts of crises happens with celebrities and public figures, but organisations and governments are not immune to them.


New research shows that public relations practitioners blame social media for reputation crisis issues.  A market research consultancy, Dynamic Markets questioned 100 senior figures and 108 in-house bosses. The research showed that 24 percent believed that traditional media ignited crisis situations, 34 percent blamed bloggers, 24 percent blamed social media and 8 percent blamed forums.

The research also found that 'half of all agencies (51 per cent) had a client that had ­exp­erienced a crisis management situation involving social media in the past 12 months. Some 61 per cent said the use of social media had exacerbated the story, while 45 per cent said it gave journalists easy access to disgruntled people.'

There are many examples of the media blowing an issue out of proportion and as a result creating a crisis for an organisation.

A case in point is the Jon Venables case which was turned into a major crisis by the media. When you think of it, you start to wonder exactly what the issue really is and whether it was even a story worth reporting about.

You also start asking exactly who benefited from such a story, except maybe some media outlets that ran the story heavily on their front pages.

Nevertheless, having it been turned into a crisis requires action from the responsible authorities.

Another case that caught my mind was the recent car parts dilemma of Toyota Motor Corporation.

The media and the public relations industry started discussions on how the reputation of Toyota has been badly affected by the recalls and the accidents the car parts malfunctions have caused.

However, they seemed to forget that car parts malfunctions are not uncommon in the car manufacturing industry, nor is it unusual in many technological industries, such as computer manufacturers.

This sort of crisis not only affects the manufacturer, but the specific industry as a whole.

All the same, Toyota had to act to avoid losing the trust of its customers.

The point really is that even if crises are created by revengeful individuals and the media, organisations still need to face the crisis and act accordingly.

Having good media relations helps to avoid your organisation being picked on heavily and negatively by the media.

Image from csna.org

PR Courses and Social Media Skills

By Toivo Mvula

A survey conducted last year by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) found that ‘mastering social media skills’ was one of the top three issues for public relations practitioners for the next two years.
This survey indicates how important it is for public relations practitioners to have the knowledge and skills on how to use social media EFFECTIVELY.

This is even more important, considering the fact that social media is driving the news agenda of the mainstream media and having a considerable impact on organisational and brand reputation management.

A recent study by PR firm Burson-Marsteller also found that 79 percent of the 100 largest companies in the Fortune 500 list use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs to communicate with customers and other stakeholders.

Even though social media is not appropriate for use by all organisations, such as the military, police departments and defence ministries, they nonetheless need to keep a check on what is being said about them on social media and video sharing sites.

To do this, PR practitioners need to have the necessary know-how to monitor public opinion on the internet.

Employers are also looking for graduates with social media skills.

For this reason, I call on the module ‘Digital Media and PR’ to be made compulsory for all PR students at the University of Stirling as well as all other higher institutions of learning.

We cannot afford a skills gap in PR graduates.

Image from New Media

Participatory Media and its Impact on Reputation Management

By Toivo Mvula

Participatory media has changed the way people are communicating. Communication has and is increasingly becoming more public as people share their thoughts and conversations online.


Participatory media includes weblogs, social networking sites, microblogging sites, email services, SMS (short message services, podcasts, videoblogs (or vlogs), among others.

Some of these conversations revolve around brands and are therefore having an impact on organisation and brand reputations.

People are sharing information on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and expressing their opinions on organisations and their products and services. What they say, ultimately has an impact on the reputation of organisations considering the fact that people tend to listen and act on what their peers tell them.

Katz and Lazerfield (Fawkes in Theaker, 2006: 28) argue that people are more easily influenced by the people they know or trust, such as friends and family.

Journalists are also increasingly using participatory media as a source of news for the mainstream media.

If such negative information leaks into mainstream media as is often the case, it could even have much disastrous effects for organisations or anyone who has a reputation to uphold.

It is therefore important that public relations practitioners embrace the new media rather than viewing it as a threat.

Weaver-Lariscy et al’s (2009) research on how organisations are monitoring public opinion in cyberspace revealed a ‘large gap in the use [of participatory media] and perceived importance between practitioners and a slow awakening among even non-user reticent to adopt as they realise its potential value’.

Lariscy, Avery, & Sohn (2007) in Weaver-Lariscy et al (2009) states that ‘given the unrestrained voice social media grant publics, practitioners will face mounting pressure to monitor their organization’s presence online to keep their fingers on the pulse of public opinion and engage in “virtual environmental spanning”. Just as practitioners can’t ignore activist voices that may reach the tipping point, social media demand a new form of surveillance and monitoring on behalf of organizations, particularly given that tools such as blogs may be a vital source of information for journalists.’

A survey conducted last year by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) found that ‘mastering social media skills’ was one of the top three issues for public relations practitioners for the next two years.

All the more so for a call for the subject ‘Digital Media’, ‘New Media’ or whatever you want to call it, to be made compulsory for all public relations students.

Google and its Buzz

By Toivo Mvula

Google recently launched its social networking site aptly named Google Buzz with a lot of buzz.


Now, many are asking if we need another social networking site when everyone is either using Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Bebo and the like.

Google Vice President for Product Development, Bradley Horowitz, told eWeek last week that Buzz was not created to challenge Facebook and Twitter, but to complement them.

Whatever that means!

Horowitz added that Google Buzz “is not just about status-casting. It’s not just checking in. It’s about meaningful interactions around meaningful topics within Buzz and it’s reaching the right audience and people are engaged.”

Popular blogger, Pete Cahmore of cnn.com and mashable.com explains the difference fairly better by referring to Facebook as a local bar, Twitter as a town square and Google Buzz as a campus.

He states: “While Twitter is ideal for public messaging and Facebook for managing your personal life, Buzz proves most useful when you're in search of answers. Post a question and your friends will weigh in with suggestions, tips and ideas. It's a place for inquiry, for learning and collaboration.”

Google Buzz is only two weeks old. If mashable.com’s differentiation of the three is correct, then maybe Google need to start promoting Buzz as such to attract more users, because now most people are seeing it as offering nothing new in the already saturated market of social networking.

Welcome

Hi. My name is Toivo Mvula.

Welcome to my blog. This blog is part of my fulfilment for an MSc Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management at the University of Stirling in Scotland, United Kingdom.


It is part of the module ‘Public Relations and Digital Media’ which aims to provide students with an understanding of the impact of digital media, social media, internet, and ICT’s on both the theory and practice of public relations.

This blog will therefore serve as a commentary on the impact of the new media on public relations practice and theory.


Toivo Mvula