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.