A Voice to Defend

Social media platforms give organizations (and public relations professionals) a quick and direct voice to the world and that voice could be used to communicate with and to the media.

In the old paradigm, an organization would have to place an opinion-editorial column in a newspaper if they needed to voice their opinion on a subject or defend themselves, usually written by public relations professionals. Today, social media platforms allow organizations to directly and instantly communicate their desires. An important aspect of this is communicating directly with the media, especially if the specific media in question is the intended direction of defense.

In the sports Twitterverse (Twitter Universe), I have seen a more then a few teams defend themselves to journalists on Twitter or Facebook after a story or column ran that they felt was incorrect or inappropriate. Social media platforms give teams a voice to fight back and this is something that journalists didn’t have to deal with as frequently in the past. This isn’t an action I would recommend a team’s public relations staff take regularly, but if appropriate, it can be a great tool for them.

Social media platforms allow for public relations professionals to fight back when they receive media coverage that they believe is in error. This is a dangerous method to use because it is usually public for everyone to see (as oppose to a private phone call, e-mail or letter), but if the timing is correct it is an advantageous tool to use, although one that should be used extremely carefully, selectively and seldom.

Update: April 1, 2011
Along the same lines as the blog post above, social media platforms allow for an immediate avenue of access for crisis communication plans. As part of the old news cycle, responses driven by public relations professionals were at the mercy of the news cycle. With social media, a crisis communication plan can start immediately with your side/response at the forefront of the news. Social media should be part of every crisis communication plan.

Identifying Social Media

The first step for public relations professionals in understanding how to use social media to their benefit is identifying what exactly can be used as a social media platform.

There are dozens among hundreds of websites and programs on the Internet that can be classified as social media platforms, but not everything communication-related can be classified as social media. Social media heavyweights consists of, but not limited to, websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace. The middleweight social media platforms range from, but not limited to, websites such as LinkedIn to del.icio.us to Classmates.com. These are examples of social media platforms being a commonplace for anyone on the Internet to visit, develop their own identity, share it openly with others and connect and network with others.

A Facebook page can connect hundreds of people by common education networks or similar interest groups. A YouTube channel can connect people across the world with common interests. A Twitter account can disseminate news or updates to millions of “followers” in less then two seconds because connections were made based on like interests.

However, not everything on the Internet where communication takes places can be considered social media. For example, instant messaging (using programs such as AOL/AIM, Yahoo! Messenger or iChat) or e-mail group lists (where users sign-up for e-mail updates on a regular basis) are not examples of social media because even though the number of individual communications can increase, those platforms cannot grow beyond its means.

Social media can be found anyplace on the Internet where one platform is used to make connections or networks with others that has the potential for exponential growth. Once identified, public relations professionals can use social media platforms as a device to communicate not only with their intended or targeted audience (including consumers), but with journalists and maybe more importantly with a non-targeted audience that has been introduced by accidentally networking.

An Introduction to Social Media

Not since the first pitch letter was e-mailed or the first press release posted on the Internet has the public relations industry encountered as big of a paradigm shift as it is currently seeing with social media. A web search on the Internet for the definition of the term social media will populate hundreds or thousands of answers varying in terminology, length and detail making it difficult to narrow down a singular meaning or concept into one or two sentences. The experts of social media will each have their own definition and that will be different then the Average Joe’s who is using one social media platform to discuss the topic on another social media application.

Since there is no one particular, widely accepted definition, I will define social media for the purpose of my exploration into the topic as a person or entity using a Internet platform, application or website to communicate, connect, discuss or network with an audience ranging from a single person or group of people which may or may not be an intended or have a specified target. Or more simply, social media is a vehicle in which people communicate with each other publicly over the Internet.

An important aspect of understanding social media is that it does not consist of any one specific medium to communicate over the Internet. At the same time, social media does not include every medium or method of communicating over the Internet. A social media medium is using a platform over the Internet to communicate with a group of people that can continuously grow and evolve along with the platform itself and has public characteristics.

As the Internet continues to evolve, methods of communication through that medium expand anywhere from simple to more complex and many of these methods fall under the social media category. Furthermore, anywhere that communication exists is an opportunity for information to be exchanged, and as such, public relations professionals must not only be aware of what social media is, but how it effects their profession, how to utilize it to their advantage to get their message across and be aware of its benefits and drawbacks.