Social media plays a huge part in our lives from shopping, to keeping up with friends and family, and even in many of our professions. There are over 3.4 billion people currently active on social media and the average person spends two and a half hours a day on social media sites. Public relations is a way of communicating to the consumer and this is also true of social media, because of this, it is important that they play hand in hand. But this hasn’t always been the case.
PR Daily discusses 5 ways that social media has reshaped the PR industry. One of the five things that it focused on was how it has made the life of a news story shorter but has made its reach tremendous. Social media is a very busy place there are constant status updates, new news breaking, and always something new that you won’t believe. Journalists are always looking for the new thing that people want or need to know and that means PR professionals need to keep up and have the next big thing about their client ready to go.
With how fast social media can communicate to the public, crisis communication is ever more important now. PR professionals must always be monitoring social media and have strategic plans in case a crisis does in fact happen. The voice of the brand and the way the public views the company is increasingly vital.
A huge way that social media has caught the attention of PR professionals is through their use of influencers. There are now influencers in about any industry now, from a Youtuber who focuses on reviewing children’s toys, to a Instagram “famous” woman who tries different brands of clothing then posts them for here 300 thousand followers. PR professionals are able to take advantage of this opportunity to get these influencers to talk about their product and attract new traffic to their brand.
Social media has also changed some of the areas of focus for PR professionals. Usually their focus was on creating meetings with the correct media outlets or getting the head of the company an interview with the right person. Although this is still a huge part of the job, PR professionals now have to focus more on the customer specifically. Social media is often the first-place consumers go to complain, question, or praise almost anything. PR professionals need to keep up on these responses in order to keep the brands image and consumers interest.
Not only has social changed the way PR professionals perform their duties it also has changed and expanded how they can achieve and prove their success. Previously as mentioned before PR was done by landing a fantastic interview or getting your message out on the right media outlets in the right amount of time; and this was the only way you could measure your success. However, now with social media it is just as easy to have a successful run with an influencer representing your product as it was to have a hit on a tv media outlet.
Social media has greatly impacted the Public Relations career for the better. I want to focus on social media in my career path and am excited to see what changes and advancements there are to come within the field and social media itself.
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