I had to immerse myself in a crash course of sorts on social media the other week. This was because my boss volunteered me to speak at the 14th National Public Relations Congress. Organized by the PR Society of the Philippines, the conference was held last September 26 to 28 and my talk was on the last day.
Boy, did I have a great time.
Personally, I learned a lot during this process since it entailed more than just preparing a Powerpoint presentation. Although I’ve been a regular user of the Internet for many years and I started blogging more than two years ago, I actually still needed to experience first-hand a lot of the things that make up what we call social media today.
Here are the highlights of my presentation:
- Social media is about technologies and practices that allow people to collaborate and share content (text, pictures, audio & video) online. It is a tool for free expression and exchange of ideas.
- Many of the underlying technologies used in social media pre-date the invention of the term Web 2.0 in 2004. At the end of the day, it is more of a sociological phenomenon than a technological one although there is no doubt that technology plays a crucial role.
- According to a Spannerworks e-book, social media is characterized by participation, conversation, openness, community and connectedness. I think its rapid growth in the last two years is largely due to the emergence of technologies that enhanced connectedness, such as folksonomies and syndication.
- The most popular types of social media are blogs, wikis, social networks, content sharing sites, bookmarking/aggregation sites, podcasts and forums.
- PR practitioners should engage social media. As a platform for free expression, rants and raves made online can affect the reputation of a person, product, company or even a country. The shaping of public opinion can be virtually instantaneous. Traditional media (broadcast and print) are consumers of social media, bringing public opinion in the virtual world to the real one. Since just about anyone can publish his/her thoughts about a company or product, there is a rise in the so-called “accidental spokesperson” (an employee or customer evangelist). As with the real world, PR professionals need to deal with issues pertaining to trustworthiness, credibility and ownership of the message when it comes to social media.
- Here are some case studies on the relevance of social media to the PR profession: (1) ownership – Barack Obama versus Anthony: Is it my space or yours?; (2) virtually instantaneous shaping of public opinion – Malu Fernandez: The Case of the Diva; (3) traditional media as consumers – Thriller: The Dancing Inmates from Cebu; and (4) some solutions create bigger problems – In-DIGG-nation: The Revolt.
- And here are some of the things PR practitioners can do to engage social media: (1) start at home by empowering employees and working closely with front-liners like customer service personnel, (2) monitor your online reputation by setting up alerts and subscribing to key sites/blogs by RSS, (3) establish your online personality through corporate bloggers, (4) engage the community by inviting credible bloggers to press events, and (5) practice social media optimization.
To be able to capture the essence of social media, one has to embrace its open and collaborative nature. As such, it is important for me to acknowledge the inputs I got from valuable sources like Spannerworks and Mediapost. I also learned a lot from yugatech’s blog (even though I don’t know the guy personally) and conversations with Maan Tolentino (current chair of the Philippine Internet Commerce Society).
I hope the audience had as much fun listening to me as I did preparing for the talk. After surviving a week of two to three hours of sleep per night, I now have accounts in several social media-related websites.
At the risk of sounding “so last year”, I must admit I had the most fun signing up for Facebook (was impressed to find some of my friends already in it) and Netvibes (where I can now monitor on a daily basis my three-year-old son’s class blog). I’m still trying to figure out Twitter though– I know how to use it but I don’t think I “get” it, and don’t know if I ever will.
It was so much fun for me that I’ve decided to start a second blog where I hope to write about more serious stuff – as opposed to the sappy kind that’s dominated this personal blog. Between two sons and two jobs, I can’t promise to make it a daily habit but perhaps I can do better than the (barely) monthly updates I’ve been doing here.
Wish me luck!
