Social media was primarily created to enable humans to communicate with one another from far and wide. Distance became no barrier to communication since the advent of social media. However, well beyond communicating and strengthening relationships, social media became a tool for business purposes. It has also helped in boosting public relations.
Social Media has made a profound impact on public relations. We will explore some of the ways social media has impacted public relations positively in this section.
Building Brand Awareness
Social Media contributes to public relations by helping the brand to build awareness. Social media serves as a medium of marketing and advertising a brand’s product and services beyond their locality. It enables people from far and wide to know about the brand even though it isn’t near them.
Creating New Opportunities
Beyond keeping relationships with customers offline, social media has also created another platform for organizations and companies to explore to keep their relationships with their clients. It has allowed them to reach out to clients on varieties of channels. Posting something on Facebook or YouTube and the likes gives the chance for organizations to engage with their clients online. The clients can give comments, share, and like the content posted by a brand.
24/7 Interactions
Gone are the days when clients could only interact with brands during business hours. With Social media, clients can interact with brands at any time of the day, creating so many expectations from the clients to the brands.
Increases Credibility
Social Media helps brands to create bonds with their clients. This will in turn increase their credibility as their clients trust them enough to always offer the best of services at every point in time. This is because you have established your brand in the media world and your relationship with clients will not deteriorate because you keep close tabs on your clients.
How Does Social Media Impact Public Relations Negatively?
As much as social media has impacted public relations positively, it has also impacted it negatively. For example, customers who aren’t satisfied with the services of a brand can air their grievances on social media thereby creating a negative image for the brand if they do not attend to those grievances wisely. This will, in turn, make the organization experience some consequences that are negative an ad harmful to the health of the organization.
Brands need to learn how to handle reputation as well as respond to negative comments tactically. This will help clients to build trust in their brand.
Conclusion
Every brand should learn how to use social media for the betterment of its brand. It is also pertinent to understand the pro and cons of using social media to derive the best out of its usage. Using it without an established understanding of its pros and cons can result in negative impacts as discussed in the previous section.
