As time goes by, it seems like social media is continuing to evolve and change before our eyes. Of course, this is very exciting for people that love and breath new technology – including my family and I! 🙂 It is just absolutely amazing to see what is being created and used for our daily lives as well as in our business practices. Social media is definitely doing this for sure – from incorporating it into how we perceive brands and corporations in terms of their social media reputation to how it is being used to teach online. It is all very fascinating.
For example, one way that social media is being implemented is to determine a corporation’s social score, and see if it is different from their real life / off line perception. Razorfish and Ogilvy PR are in the process now in creating a new measurement tool to calculate this through social influence marketing. On the other hand, social media is not only about reviewing what is being written about a corporation, but it has evolved how entire campaigns are being implemented. Corporations now more than ever have to be aware of social customer relationship management, or also known as sCRM. Brian Solis made some excellent points about sCRM and stated:
“Social CRM is no longer an option. It necessitates brand involvement to proactively share answers, solve problems, establish authority, and build relationships and loyalty, one tweet, blog post, update, and like at a time. In the world of business, social media, led by Twitter, is forcing companies to augment the offshoring of reactive customer service with the nearshoring of proactive customer engagement. The conversations that power social media are sparking a sense of urgency to identify influential voices and talk to customers in a place and time of their choosing (generally, in public and online).”
It also appears that more corporations are now using social videos more into their PR and Marketing strategies to reach out to their target audiences. This is definitely one reason why I personally believe that PR students and future practitioners need to have extensive amount of training in creating new media, videos, and online / visual communication tools to be best prepared for the workplace. Most universities that I know that have strong PR programs (ex. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, USC, and Tennessee) have visual communications classes that they offer to their PR students.
In other words – to be successful in both PR practice and in the classroom – we have to make sure that we are not only up to speed on how new technology is being used, but we have to understand how and why it is implemented in Public Relations. Plus, it is our role to educate and inform the future PR professionals with this information and provide them with the necessary tools for them to succeed in the 21st century business environment.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
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