Social Media: A Necessary Component of PR

Social media is swiftly becoming an essential component of all media campaigns. A survey conducted by the Public Relations Society of America found that over 80 percent of practitioners surveyed believe that social media will remain a key element of public relations and 90 percent believe that it is a significant element of any communications plan. Because of the vitality that social media brings to a public relations campaign, it is essential that social media efforts are reflected in the time, effort and most importantly, budget, of the campaign.

PR Professional Paola Faessler’s capstone on the use of social media in non-profit organizations proposes multiple reasons as to why a social media campaign requires adequate attention and finances to be successful. Faessler mentions that since many of the most common and popular media outlets (like Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are free, there needs to be a substantial budget given to the public relations professional overseeing the social media element of the campaign. Faessler also mentions that social media needs to be a measurable tool for the public relations professional running the campaign. I believe that if a public relations professional plans to use a social media website as any component of their campaign, a tangible goal is necessary. Once they have gotten their message out to the audience (in the form of blogs, posts, etc), it is the duty of a public relations pro to use databases, like Cision, to discover how many prospective clients/customers are viewing these sites. The public relations professional can also use the responses posted from their audience as a means of gathering qualitative research and understanding about the consumers’ needs.

 I believe that a public relations professional needs to launch a multi-dimensional social media campaign to discover if this is the appropriate outlet to reach an audience. In an extremely competitive economy an appealing website is no longer a strong enough asset for a campaign. The public relations pro needs to use blogs, videos, photo sharing, etc. to entice their potential consumers. Once the practitioner has completed a unique and multi-dimensional social media campaign, they can firmly determine if social media is the best media outlet to fulfill the goals of their clients.