The Uses of Social Media

1. Introduction

Social media has had a stunning impact on the practice of public relations since the first weblogs appeared a dozen years ago. This has continued and increased to the extent that it has attracted millions of users, many of whom have incorporated these sites into their daily practices by using various social media forms including images, texts and social networking sites such as facebook and twitter. According to Tancer (2008:23), says that social media has over taken pornography as the number one use of the internet. This essay seeks to provide a theoretical background of social media networks and their uses in public relations. Moreover, key concepts will be defined and advantages and disadvantages of using social media networks in public relations will also be given and recommendations on benefits derived from using social media networks in an organization. Lastly a précis of the discussion will be given. As already mentioned background information about social media networks will be explored in the paragraph to follow.

1.1. Definition of terms

Public relations (PR) are the relationships that organisations build and maintain with publics (Cutlip, Center, Broom & Du Plessis 2002:10) .Tredinnick (2006) defined social networking sites as those sites driven by user-participation and user-generated content. Social media is defined as an interactive website providing information while at the same time the content can be somehow influenced (Dykeman 2008) Also according to Palen (2008:76), defines social media as "blogs, social networking environments, person-to-person broadcasting messaging and other Web 2.0 applications". Social Network public relations are the process where practitioners can promote "websites, products, or services through online social channels and to communicate with and tap into a much larger community" (Weinberg 2009: 3).

1.1.2. Background Information of Social media

The first social networking site was launched in 1997 and was called the SixDegrees.com and it enabled users to create profiles and surf friends list (Boyd & Elison 2008). With technology evolving, the hype around this type of media (social media) are enabled by the technical ground work of web 2.0 which provided the possibility for internet users to create their own content (O'Reilly, 2005). The intricacy of this interaction between the website users is almost unlimited and provides a two way communication channel for users (Boyd & Elison 2008). Social media pages can be divided into several networking sites and each of these social networking sites allows a two way communication between users. Currently the major networking sites are MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Classmates.com and LinkedIn. For instance empirical evidence shows that more than three-quarters (79%) of the Fortune Global 100 companies use at least one of the most popular social media platforms to actively engage with stakeholders (Burson-Marsteller 2010). The study also found out that only 20% of the world major international companies are utilizing all four of these platforms to engage with stakeholders (Burson-Marsteller 2010). This points to the fact that social media is bringing public relations to its original foundation of building and maintaining relationships (Avery, Lariscy, Amador, Ickowitz, Primm, & Taylor, 2010).

Although social media networks have impacted the activities of public relation practitioners since their introduction, public relations practitioners are still incorporating traditional tools such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines (Cutlip, Centre & Broom 2002:60). However what makes these social networking sites unique compared to traditional public relations tools is that social media are inherently interactive, communicative and play a vital role on online image construction and reputation of an organisation (Avery et al 2010). Thus one may say the emergency and incorporation of social media networks as a public relations tool was a good thing to the development of public relations field.

2. Uses of social media networks in public relations

Social networking sites have had a major impact on public relation activities. These sites are used in various PR activities such as customer service tools, for research puposes, engaging with stakeholders, building brand loyalty and for management crisis. The following paragraphs will expagorate on the various uses of social media networks in public relations.

2.1 Customer service tools

In PR, social media networks such as Facebook, MySpace and twitter are as used as customer service tools, and they can serve a variety of functions. For example in South Africa ABSA has successfully integrated social media platforms as customer service tool by using Facebook as a strategic tool to open up new communication channels and find ways to understanding and satisfying customer needs(Rensburg & Cant 2009:183) The bank has applied the Facebook page as a website for customers to provide them with feedback that can be quickly addressed and reviewed and also as a platform were existing and potential customers can use it to stay in touch with each other and share the latest news (Rensburg & Cant 2009:183).This shows that PR practitioners are using social media platforms like Facebook as customer service tools were by ideas are generated from listening to customers comments and concerns. As a result development can flourish in an organisation (Berthon, Pitt, McCarthy & Kates 2007:45). However, for companies to make the most of social media platforms as customer service tools companies must spend time monitoring the platforms and respond to users comments in a timely, personal manner. On the other hand by capitalizing on social media platforms as customer service tools, organisations can potentially open doors to communication and build their reputation (Berthon, Pitt, McCarthy & Kates 2007:45). Thus the follow paragraph will explain how social media platforms are used for management crisis.

2.2. Social media platforms and management crises

Fearn-Banks (2001:2) describes a crisis as a situation which results in a negative outcome that is likely to affect the organisations products, publics and its image and it also threatens business activities in the environment they would be operating in. Crises management in oragnisations frequently falls under public relations practitioners and one of the key components of handling a crisis is controlling the flow of information by developing and disseminating key messages to the media and an organisation's publics (Shin & Cameron 2005:87). For example, Toyota