When we came to the words Public Relations, what do across your mind? According to Wikipedia, public relation is a profession with varying definitions because of its many functions and the differentiating perceptions held by its practitioners and the public. ...
Just then, according to The Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education, Public Relations is a distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communications, understanding, acceptance, and cooperation between an organization and its publics; helps management to keep informed on and responsive to public opinion; defines and emphasizes the responsibility of management to serve the public interest; helps management keep abreast of and effectively utilize change, serving as an early warning system to help anticipate trends; and uses research and sound and ethical communication techniques as its principal tools (Fraser P. Seitel, pg 4, 10th edition, 2007).
Then, we can see here that PR really important for all of the organization. As in Malaysia, PR is not widely used but there are few good efforts from large organizations in Malaysia practices PR. they used lots of media to be heard by the public, to get the attention of target public and also to stimulate in message content. Public needs to interact with the PR practitioner and in the global world nowadays, blogger who used blogs as a media and also social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc are popular tools to speak out their mind. Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) view on how public relations originated.According to the authors, in the constant effort to get free space in the media for their clients, press agents or publicists used every possible trick to take advantage of the newspapers and other media. This was called “flacking for space” (Grunig & Hunt,
1984, p. 30)
So, what is social media that people always talking about?
In bigmouthmedia, it is written that social media is the online technology and methods through which people can share content, personal opinions, swap different perspectives and insights into world issues and generally discuss the evolution of media in itself.
Social media website content can come in many shapes and forms:
- Text - text is often used to put across opinions or write blog posts.
- Images - images and photos can display anything from holiday photos to shots by professional photographers.
- Audio - social media lets you create podcasts for users to download.
- Video - video sites mean that you'll be able to record a video of your child's birthday for friends all over the world to see.
The most popular types of social media websites are huge at the moment. A few examples of these social media websites are:
Social networking - websites that allows you to create a personal profile about yourself then chat, discuss and share information with others such as friends and family. Prime examples of social networking sites are MySpace, Bebo and Facebook.
Wikis - wikis are websites that allow you to create, edit and share information about a subject or topic. Wikipedia, for instance, is one of the world's most popular wikis.
Video sharing - video-sharing sites allow you to upload and share your personal videos with the rest of the web community. A perfect example of a video sharing website is YouTube.
Photo sharing - photo-sharing websites allow users to upload pictures and images to a personal account which can then be viewed by web users the world over. Flickr acts as a great example of a successful photo-sharing site.
News aggregation - news aggregators provide a list of the latest news stories published by users from a range of different websites. Digg, for instance, is one of the web's largest news aggregators with one of the most dedicated communities.
Social bookmarking - social bookmarking sites allow users to publicly bookmark web pages they find valuable in order to share them with other internet users.
Online gaming - online gaming is often based around communities. World of Warcraft is prime example of online gaming.
Presence apps - these websites allow you to post micro blog-like posts to announce what you are currently doing. Twitter is a good example of a presence app.
Taking from all of these examples, we can say that public can do lots of thing with social media. PR should used this oppurtunity to connect with them.
Now, what is your opinion? Do social media can be the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia? Please give your comment here and I really appreciate it so much because you are giving knowledge to be shared together. Thank you.
"The roles of social media as the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia"
Salam,
ReplyDeleteHm, I think social media have many roles. Not just Facebook, all of its are useful in PR practices. My dear friend Yuyu, I guess that I can say here that from what I've known before social media can spread news quite fast! Just like Emmet's news on.....
Thus, one of the roles that I can give here is based on the PR practitioner interactions with the client and on research conducted by the them, they then develop a comprehensive plan for a PR campaign which states their goals and objectives for the campaign, identifies key publics and messages, and describes the best strategies and tactics to reach their stated goal(s). So, social media is so crystal clear important to PR .
Hm, I will write again here, miss you.....
Fida82
Salam,
ReplyDeleteOh my deAR Fida, it is just 1 role but she asked for roles, I mean lots of roles!!!!!
Whoa, I think social media is the responsibility of the public relations. I can see this in my company. Our PR is so cute enough to play with Facebook everyday!!!!!
Duh, I dunno what is interesting there, maybe lots of beautiful gal,wink wink!!!!
I would like to say that it is the responsibility of the PR unit to monitor the social media as bunches of not important information always be loaded in my Facebook and Twitter. Public relation can give good information but sometimes in my social media space, I've got to evaluate which one is good, same goes with my company email.
Hope that this information can give good marks to you....
Fida, you are not helping her.....
;-P
Assalamualaikum....
ReplyDeleteWa, banyak dah komen, nak komen aper ek? jap, nie amik kat website aper ntah, tapi rasa cam social media memang banyk peranan dalam PR.
This is because Social media best practices really call for jargon-free, clear, and authentic communications - which PR pros are best trained to provide. Social media is a conversation where successful organizations are actively engaged in producing
Then, social media should be controlled in PR department cause in my office, PR department that view lots of complaints from the public about our services.
Thats all I can give. Next time I'll drop bye. Miss ya....
hm, Yuni, biler nk blanje ns ayam? Hikhik.....
Salam, hm...you guys really commnt my blog at last....Thanx....but LIk, never heard before that social media is under PR responsibility, can u tell me more?
ReplyDeleteEmmet, thanx...ns ayam tu nnti lepas raye ah....
Fida, quite skema there....hikhik...thanx ek...
Hi n salam,
ReplyDeleteSorry for my grammatical mistakes after this. I've read what you have stated about public relation and its relation to the social media. As one of the mass communication ex students, I would like to state here that social media is related to social.This kind of media are usually used for social interaction, finding friends, getting in touch with friends and etc. Somehow, this kind of media offer opportunity for some organization or company also music bands to promote whatever they want to promote.
In Malaysia, social media is quite famous. Who doesn't know Facebook, just like LiK stated that his PR department seems to fascinate with that thingy.
As I'm working in a telecommunication company,PR units is one of the department under Corporate communication department. they used many tech nowadays and they are specialized in tech savvy. No wonder one of my friend working under that unit has 4 handphone, 2 for his work n 2 for blablabla....
! I'm quite agree if social media is one of the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia because we need many expertise in PR. Even just 1 PR practitioner is not enough for one company. My friend also told me that in promoting the company or organization,they need website to show their corporate value, well, that shows us that social media plays some roles here.
As a conclusion, yuni, I really agree that social media can be the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia. Social media not just for socialize but can be a positive ground if they used it properly.
Salam,
Afzal
PS: See u in lab....miss ya lab coat....
Salam,
ReplyDeleteMelampau Walik kutuk aku dalam nie!!!!
WEK!!!!
Thanx guys, Afzal, can u tell me more about other social media and their roles?
ReplyDeleteThanx guys, Afzal, can u tell me more about other social media and their roles?
ReplyDeleteSalam,ayuni,
ReplyDeleteHm, No doubt, I agree that social media can be the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia. Based on your explanation and examples, I would say that this social media is among the suitable medium of communication between PR practitioners and the public in this recent years. Most of Malaysian nowadays involved with this social media. Just ask anybody, do they have Facebook? Friendster? Tagged? Even the die-hard gamers do communicate among themselves in the online games. So, I would agree that social media can be the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia. It is a good opportunity for PR practitioners to make use of this mean of communication.
Knock knock!!!
ReplyDeleteSalam,
Erm, I've read through and I think that in my point of view, social media has its own pro and cons. In the context of PR, I can state that social media is a place that everyone can say their opinion. So, everyone can spread false complaints and news there. Think about it.....
Please think in both way, positive and negative....
Greetings....
ReplyDeleteSalam,.....
Yuni, what a nice blog!!!!!! I've waited it so long to scratch something in your blog. After he goes, you don't write anymore....
I knew about this blog from Emmet. You are still little Lady Green that I've known before.
Well, I'm always around marketing department even though I'm the human resource manager. In our organization that I can't state here, the PR unit is under marketing. When I'm talking to one of them, they said that they are doing the rebranding, the logos and all that, etc. Immediately, I recalled that when the organization doing that, they consider the publics view.
Publics view? In context of what medium that they used, they used survey from internet, mostly. Yup, social media is their main tools. I don't asked what social media that they used but the selling increase after receiving some complaints from the internet, the PR units said.
Leyla, I just view it in a positive side because our marketing department just stated social media can be good tools for marketing but I do agree that there are also the negative side of it. Thats all I can comment. Yuni, you will always stay cute.....kikikikik
SaR
reputation can easily damaged with social media. I used to read status update in my facebook's wall complaining on products and services of certain malls which does end up with a lot of comments.
ReplyDeleteAnd with Facebook and Youtube, you are able to share videos easily. So, anything caught on camera, we really have to be aware on that, nowadays.
I am involved in business and I do notice there're posts in new media that condemn our products. Therefore, during gatherings with our consumers and distributors, we have to highlight and correct them for any misunderstanding or misinformation so they will gain trust again with our products.
I think companies nowadays have to be alert with new media so they can keep on track of what's going on with their audience.
mcm pernah bljr dulu ni. ;)
ReplyDelete