No "Undo" In Social Media

As quick, instant and easy as it is to send a positive message or promotion on the various social media platforms, it is as just as quick, instant and easy to send a bad one.

Whether intentional or accidental, tongue-in-cheek, politically incorrect, or otherwise, a bad statement can be broadcasted over the Internet via a social media platform. And just as a positive news item can go viral on the Internet because of social media platforms, a poor or mistimed statement can have the same fate, albeit a disaterious one.

Yes, there is a delete button, but that doesn’t erase the statement forever. If just one person sees it and responds to it, it can live forever in cyberspace and still spread. And even if no one sees it before it is delete, web search engines like Google continuously patrol social media platforms and record a history or “cache” of what is being submitted and broadcasted and there is no way of deleting it from there.

Every Tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn status update must be made carefully and when statements are made through social media platforms, public relations professionals must as certain they are appropriate just as if they were going in a press release.

Advantages of Social Media: Continuous News Cycle

Social media platforms offer many advantages that public relations professionals not only should take advantage, but also must take advantage of in order to stay with the innovation curve of the trade. These range from changes in the new cycle, reaching out to and making new connections with the media and to producing instant statements to the world.

The Continuous News Cycle

One aspect or feature of using any social media platform that stands out among others is the quickness of being able to share and spread information. The information being shared could be personal, opinion based or most importantly for this topic, news worthy.

Here's one take: Any type of service that allows a reporter to deliver breaking news to thousands/millions of people in literally two seconds is going to stick around. Social media platforms such as Twitter - or Facebook with its status updates - has the ability to deliver information to an unlimited amount of people simultaneously.

What makes this different from television or a news website is that social media platforms aggregate information from different sources into one place, meaning, a user on Twitter can be following numerous news reporters and Twitter’s website or a Twitter application or program will continuously compile the Tweets of everyone who they are following and deliver the information in one place. Facebook’s interface or feed is very similar. Instead of watching multiple news channels on television or constantly refreshing or visiting multiple websites, a social media user can view information from several sources at the same time and in one place.

Why is this an advantage to public relations professionals? It is an advantage because social media platforms allow for quick, easy and mass dissemination of news and/or press releases to an audience either through news reporters, fellow followers (through forwarding, ReTweeting) or the company itself. Just as the Internet threw out the traditional 24-hour news cycle, social media is retransforming the Internet news cycle which is no longer limited to the time of how often a website is revisited, but how often any news organization updates one of its social media feeds.