Hello.
And welcome to our lesson about social media
and mobile communication.
This presentation covers material
from chapter 10 of Tom Kelleher's Public Relations
second edition.
In this video, you'll learn about the evolution
of mobile communication in public relations,
uses and gratifications of social and mobile media,
and strategies for creating engaging content.
You likely have experience with social media
and mobile communication.
However, it's not enough to merely use social media.
Companies need a strategy to make sure their message doesn't
get lost or glossed over because of selective attention.
This becomes particularly important
when we consider how ubiquitous mobile phones have become.
More than 5 billion people have mobile phones,
which means that everyone from employees to customers
are always digitally accessible, within reason.
Mobile devices have opened opportunities
to reach people in new, exciting ways.
Social networking and instant messaging apps
allow individuals to communicate with each other
and organizations.
So organizations foster and join conversations with publics,
creating interactive opportunities and also
opportunities for personalized experiences.
While organizations must be careful about how
the information is used, consumer data
can be harnessed to give audiences
personalized recommendations for music, products, services,
and so on.
Similarly, we can use location-based targeting
to reach people with information relevant
to their physical location.
Apps like Uber, Yelp, and Snapchat
create opportunities to reach publics
with engaging, interactive content right where they are.
Research tells us that it's important to understand
how people use media and why if we're
going to create meaningful relationships and content.
This requires us to use social and visual listening
strategies.
Social listening is when organizations track, analyze,
and respond to conversations about specific topics
or relevant issues to an organization.
For example, practitioners may follow
hashtags or online conversations to understand
how people are talking about their organizations.
This can help them modify their communication strategies
and identify emerging trends.
Similarly, visual listening is when
companies use image recognition to identify visual mentions
in images and videos.
By being able to see how publics are verbally and visually
communicating about a brand, they
can better manage brand reputation,
identify new product and service ideas,
and participate in interactive, two-way conversations.
They can also create more engaging strategies.
As you know, it's not enough to just be online.
You have to create engaging content
if you're going to cut through the clutter
of social and mobile communication strategies.
Content is defined in many ways, but ultimately it
is the text, graphics, images, video,
and audio used to communicate with audiences.
Combining two or more forms of these media results
in the multimedia content you're likely familiar with.
While the way in which these forms of media are combined
can greatly vary, the ultimate goal
is to create more opportunities to engage users.
However, in addition to creating engaging content,
practitioners also have to be mindful of how to manage
social media interactions.
One thing social media has allowed us to do
is build stronger relationships with communities and publics.
Whether people are engaging in brand-specific conversations
or creating groups via social media,
they are building and participating in communities
to share their interests in an organization, its services,
or its products.
Many organizations have even started online communities
such as Facebook pages.
Others have tapped influencers to help build community
and strengthen engagements.
But all of this requires a lot of management and monitoring.
Not only are community managers responsible for starting
conversations and answering questions,
they also need to moderate pages and content
for inappropriate and sometimes even illegal
content and conversations.
This monitoring may often be done manually
by trained managers, but it also can be accomplished
using artificial intelligence.
Overall, social media and mobile communication
has significantly changed and continues
to change communication practices.
As these technologies evolve, it will
be important to understand new trends and practices.
To learn about legal issues in public relations,
continue to chapter 11.