I found the following article to be quite relevant. In class, we spoke about how PR has and will be affected by the social media era. With the BP oil spill crisis, PR has proven to still be vital. One thing that is evident and obvious about social media is that it spreads information significantly faster and to more people. It also allows people to broadcast their personal feelings about the oil spill through an outlet that consumers and BP officials can access very easily. PR is definitely still important in this industry, in this case we learn that it is being used in crisis communication to counter the mass amount of information, opinions and in some cases lies spread through social media.
To read the entire article visit:
http://tinyurl.com/24nzrdl
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3 comments:
Good article Brandee, one good quote that popped out to me in this was as follows:
"With the spike in social media helping to blur the lines between citizen journalism, marketing, and news, so-called "reputation management" is taking up an increasing chunk of companies' time"
It is so true that social media puts organizations on edge as far as answering the legitimate and crazy things that go viral. I also think sincerity in any situation is hard to argue against. While opening up two-way communication through social media is good for organizations, ultimately consumer loyalty might be based more an approach of sincerity.
A comment wall about a product, for example, offers information. But a warranty for that product offers sincerity.
Agreed! I would much rather receive a guaranteed warrantee for a product instead of a response to my tweet. From my point of view, warrantees are proactive and reduce crisis communications. Additionally, although there are tons of people on social media there are still those that are not. Therefore, solely relying on social media to communicate with consumers is not the most effective solution.
Brandee, I couldn’t agree with you more about the importance of being proactive. For me, this was something sorely lacking from BP’s response to the disaster in the Gulf – especially on the social media front. Miles Nadal, who is featured in the article you posted, noted that “If you don't get ahead of the message, you will always be fighting a losing battle.” It seems this is exactly the position BP is in. The company has already lost control of their message in the social media realm. Nowhere is this more apparent than on Twitter, where, the author notes, a “fake Twitter account” @bpglobalpr, has over ten times as many followers as BP’s official Twitter account.
I’m surprised that the author doesn’t mention that BP actually tried, unsuccessfully, to get the fake Twitter account shut down. BP’s reaction shows just how influential they consider Twitter to be – and suggests that they didn’t give Twitter the respect it deserved before the crisis hit. It also shows that they are playing catch-up. If BP had recognized the importance of social media, they would’ve proactively established a strong presence on Twitter long before any crisis happened. That way, they could’ve developed a relationship with customers and made it more difficult for an anonymous user to take control of their name, their brand, and their message.
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