The social media phenomenon has been expanding at an amazing rate in recent years. It has become an ever-present gateway between our personal and workplace lives, and sometimes it’s hard to believe that we ever survived without it. It is a tool that we as Public Relations professionals can use to build brand awareness and image. And it’s only going to become bigger. Brett Safron at PRSA, the Public Relations Society of America, asks, ‘What will drive the social media revolution in 2011?’
In 2010, consumers can rely on social network conversations to find the topics that interest them. Facebook has surpassed Google to become the top source of traffic to major news and information portals like Yahoo and MSN. Twitter allows conversation between companies and their clients, and Foursquare is the next big social media tool.
So what does 2011 hold?
• Developing the next generation of social media monitoring tools to allow real-time monitoring of all online content, with automated text and analysis capabilities that give a fuller understanding of online conversations and the profiles of influencers.
• New capabilities of social networking programs, such as a recommendations engine. Imagine uploading a press release to your PR software platform and then letting the system do all the legwork, such as identifying what’s been written in the past about the topic and by whom, revealing the influencers who have been positive, neutral or negative and showing contacts most appropriate and how to reach them.
• The basic principles of PR remain unchanged, but communication and relationships are becoming completely digital.
The social media revolution is creating a new, digital world. Everyone is a publisher, and communicating a clear and consistent story about an organisation is becoming more challenging and exciting than ever before.
Read the full article HERE.
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