Week 4 ::Creating buzz: New Media Tactics Have Changed the PR and Advertising Game::

By: Azasyazana binti Azizan  2009698944

Nowadays, we can see there are a lot of communication developments around the world. The establishment of the new media these days has changed numerous strategies used in the PR field and advertising game. As the communication has highly developed, the need in using the internet and new media also increase.

The public relations are pulling ahead of advertising as the architect of buzz. There are also options for the companies in investing for their benefits. They choose to invest in "viral games" and "contextual marketing" rather than primetime events. So adding a few dollops of buzz as a PR tactic can't possibly hurt, even though some of it may be stealthy. There is a dark art called "astroturfing" which the responsible PR pros won't touch and experimental.

The term ‘Buzz’ here means the modern variant of gossip which is a combination of marketing communication and public relations in a highly networked world. The world bypassing print media for its first contact with news, through text messaging than voice via mobile phone, and a world in which e-mail-circulated stories and chat room postings travel faster than a newsletter or a press release. A new set of communication tools has now upstaged trusted old ones, and yet the communicators should agree with it. Besides that, people nowadays more trusted on the PR rather than the advertisement towards an issue occurred in ones’ company.

There are two factors causes the shifting which is the changing of technology and the struggling global economy. People are now looking for the new media venues and new tactics in order to advertise their products and services rather than other media. According to Ries, “word of mouth is the real secret weapon in building a brand. But how do you get the first mouth started? The media is a great place to start. You don’t need traditional media for that.”

In the pre-internet days, getting TV audiences to call a toll-free number to enter a sweepstakes is important for integrated marketing communications (IMC). This looks more creative and interesting than ordinary media used. The communications between audiences also become effective since it leads to s direct communication.

The new PR may sound rebellious and anarchic, but those who demand it are intensely focused on measurement, which can also happen in real time. Marketers who are looking for life beyond the 30second commercial are monitoring clickthroughs, and the time spent on product pages.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_6_21/ai_n13677970/

Week 4 ::The Future of Media Relations::

By:  Mohamed Firdaus bin Mohamed Noor

Media relations have been around us for ages and it evolves day by day until what we have now. From printed press to electronic media, all these medium of information play a big role in the media relations.

This article the future of media relations written by James L. Horton revolving around what the media relations will become in the next 5 years. Of course the article was written in 2005 and now we are in 2011 and we already tasted what Horton had expected. 

In the article, Horton outlines FOUR main areas that are critical to media relations changes. Those four areas are - how we work, how we communicate, the environment in which we communicate and legal issues.

Horton stresses out that ‘how we work’ will be the one area those media relations practitioners will continue to experience as the time changes. In 2005, the practitioners already familiar with e - mail, instant messaging, digital imaging, webcasts, online databases and such. Plus, there are other technological things such as engine optimization, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), peer-to-peer file sharing (beyond music and video), web measurement, digital film-making; integrated marketing, online collaboration, VOIP and independent publishing of text. Here in 2005 itself the practitioners already face decisions about how to incorporate these buzz words into their work.

Changes in work habits have been evolutionary but inexorable. These new media tools can help the practitioners to do their work better and faster. Horton said that the next five years will be continual evolution of what has happened for the last 20 years. In the 1980s – a practitioner needed a personal assistant to get press kits out, word process letters and do media follow-up. Today, the practitioner does that work. Ratios of assistants to practitioners used to be 1:1, then 1:2, 1:3, 1:7 and now, none at all. This shows that this technological advancement helps the practitioners to do their work efficiently and without the help of the assistant. This will make the headcount of the public relations practitioners in a department remain small. 

According to the author, there are three environments in which technological shifts will change how media relations practitioners practice their craft – large communications businesses with media relations units, independent PR firms and internal media relations. These three environments are important and the practitioners have to have good knowledge and be ready with the changes that come. Eventhough there will be changes in the technology and the future, there are few skills such as news writing, news judgment, telephone and in-person presentation skills that are essential to the practitioners that will blend with the old and new abilities. 

The largest shift, as this article is written, is the move of traditional media toward online and the uncertainty this move is causing to media business models. This shift changes the way practitioners work with the media and the shift also make room for immediacy. The consumers nowadays become more demanding. Apart from that, the shift also makes one important trend in communications of content which is cost. The internet has practically collapsed the cost of publishing. Anyone can publish anything online and can have the whole world to read it. Another trend is the news - on - demand, where anyone can view, watch and look for news whenever they want and in any format that they desire.

With all these changes, the practitioners will remain working with the reporters online for the most part because it is the fastest and easiest contact method. Media relations practitioners will have more responsibilities with the archives and the use of newsroom will widen accordingly with the technology.

The future will revolve around the online technology and many traditional ways of communication and presentation will change and there will be legal issues surrounding the internet. Privacy and security together with copyright will be the main issue with the online world. Lastly, fraud and abuse will be the issues that media relations will have problem with. Faux publications and self-appointed “critics” will appear online. Most of the time, these people can be cleaned out, but not always.

http://www.online-pr.com/Holding/Future_of_Media_Relations.PDF 

Week 3 ::Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills::

By:  Mohamed Firdaus bin Mohamed Noor  2009462752

Essential online public relations and marketing skills is a research that was done by Eric Schwartzman, the founder of iPressroom with the collaboration of Trend Stream, Korn/Ferry International and Public Relations Society of America.

Online world has been around us for years and has already been the trend over the past years. This report by Schwartzman was done in intention of helping the public relations, corporate communications and marketing professionals to better understand and appreciate how organisations are integrating online communications into their business practices.

The research was done in six weeks and about 278 respondents were involved. The main objective was to get unbiased, quantitative information on the impact of the emerging channels such as social media on organizational communications, both in terms of what activities are being employed and what skill sets communications professionals need in today’s job market.

From the research, Schwartzman found out that new media and social media are now a core part of the web-based communications mix. The new media and social media have become the important channels of the organisation’s communication. The e - mail and social networking outranked Search engine optimization (SEO) as the activities in the web-based communication. The findings also suggest that the organisations have the intention of using the social media to get the word out, but they do not have the planning and the strategies to do so.

 

Schwartzman also said that, according to the According the “2009 Edelman Trust Barometer,” as a source of company information, a company’s own website is seen as more credible than business blogs, personal blogs, social networking sites and advertising. But, many of the organisations’ communicators failed to see this and continue to think that social networking, micro-blogging and blogging as more important than actively managing the content at their own corporate website which can create a fundamental gap in judgement with respect to online communications planning.

The research also stated that small to medium-sized enterprises are better than larger organisations when it comes to adopting Twitter (64% versus 47%) and social networking (74% adoption versus 38%) as the activities in the web based communications. But, the large organisations fight back with blog and website which stated that both are well maintained by the larger organisations compared to the small to medium - sized enterprises.

Public relations are leading the social media revolutions inside all organisations. This can be seen in the stats provided from the research that is provided below where public relations have come on top in almost every aspect;

• PR leads marketing in the management of all social media communications channels. Marketing leads PR in managing only by email marketing and SEO.

• In 51% of organisations, PR lead digital communications compared to 40.5% where marketing leads

• PR is responsible for blogging at 49% of all organisations.  Marketing is responsible for blogging at 22% of all organisations. PR is responsible for social networking at 48% of all organisations.  Marketing is responsible for social networking at 27% of all organisations.

• PR is responsible for micro-blogging at 52% of all organisations.  Marketing is responsible for micro - blogging at 22% of all organisations

The result of the research in the question ‘In my search for PR and/or marketing job candidates, knowledge of the following are or were important or very important’ showed that almost 80% of respondents agree that knowledge of social networks is either important or very important. It is almost as equal as the knowledge for the mainstream media.     

The research also showed that social media is growing as one of the important activity in the communications approach, with the majority of organisations considering hiring a specialist.

Schwartzman stated four important things in his conclusion. The first is the risk of obsolescence; he said that public relations and marketing professionals should equip themselves with social media and new media knowledge to reduce the risk of obsolescence. Next is public relations lead in social networking. It was stated in the research that public relations leads marketing in social networking, micro-blogging, blogging, podcasting, social bookmarking and even web content management.

The last two are potential gap in strategy and ROI evaluation challenges where Schwartzman said that it is good for the organisations to take social and new media seriously but there is maybe a potential gap in strategy because the channels that they use might not be the ones used by the public. The evaluation challenges are the difficulty that the organisations will face in evaluating their return on investment for these emerging channels until they learn to develop a more sophisticated approach to building and managing landing pages and web content management on their websites.


http://www.ipressroom.com/pr/corporate/document/ipr_2009_Digital_Readiness_final.pdf

Week 3 ::Social Media is the Responsibility of Public Relations::

By:  Abdullah Fikry bin Masnoor  2009487014

When I am just online for searching some article for my assignment, I was attracted to this article which entitled “Social Media is the Responsibility of Public Relations that was written by Jason Falls. The author came out with a question which exactly place should the social media fall in the organizational structure. Then he came out with his own answer and opinion which the social media should be the responsibility of public relations. 

Jason Falls then gave explanation for the reason why he thinks that social media should be the responsibility of public relations. His answer is quite simple because the social media is actually a method of communication.  Social media tools are mostly driven by technology to deliver a message or messages. We are in the era of technology transition where the communication professionals or PR practitioners needed to learning quickly that there’s more to competency than communication skills to be relevant and effective in the age of social computing. Nowadays, technology has become a requirement of the skill set. But still there are so many communication professionals are badly poor in average computer understanding, much less that of web-based technologies and tools. 

Jason Falls is not place social media effort totally on the PR staff’s shoulder unless the organization’s PR department can demonstrate kind of tech-savviness required to accept the responsibility. He would, instead employ a expert in social media who reports to the same person or department as the public relations director with both instructed to work hand-in-hand on social media projects. 

Jason believe that in three to five years will come, he see social media marketing as an almost exclusive domain of public relations professionals, so long as we get our joint heads out of our asses and learn how to do it. Social media can be considered as public relations in the online world. The kinds of social media such as blogs, social networks, podcast, or wikis share the some way to a component of public relations which is writing, corporate communications, community relations, media relations and event management. 

Public relations as social media owner in many ways also address the fear of the online community that marketers do not fit in. Thinking we can trim away the corporate chat and manage clear communications efforts in years to come, the PR representatives are the least likely to sell and most competent of speaking as humans to humans, rather that up-selling product to the consumers. 

Before he ends his article, he came out with a question again which whether the public relations will evolve as the social media will evolve into components of a sophisticated public relations effort which only us as the PR practitioners wannabe to answer that. That is all from me right now. We will meet again in the next article review. See Y’all!!!

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/online-public-relations/social-media-is-the-responsibility-of-public-relations/

Week 3::Learn To Love The (Shallow, Divise, Unreliable) New Media::

By:  Syazwani binti Abd. Latif  2009296982

This article is taken from The Atlantic Magazine which is being published in the United State of America. It was written by James Fallow. For this article, Fallow had interviewed several people who had made big impacts in the journalistic world. Even though the article is quite lengthy, I found out that the contents are amusing and some even surprises me. Who could have guessed the scenario in a well-developed country’s media world is actually very chaotic and full of frenzies.

It is said that the journalistic world is nowadays filled with people who are market-minded and only think about profit making instead of keeping their virtue in telling the truth to the public and educating them. It is destructive but yet unavoidable. One statement made by the notorious face of Nightline on ABC, Ted Koppel, who said that “we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we are now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers” really interests me in a very ironic way. As the end-user of the media, I do believe that we are now being treated as customers who demand for sensational stories, not necessarily informational ones. In simpler words, the more controversial a story is, the more valuable and sought after is the story. Just like the US President, Barrack Obama, stated that it is difficult to keep everyone to focus on the future plans because those are not the things that is being portrayed on the modern media.

Fallow stressed on the importance of the media people to re-embrace their roles as information providers and not only think about business and profit making. Journalist, especially, must obligate themselves to make the news interesting and try to resist from sliding into the infotainment age. We all can see clearly now that the newspapers are falling dramatically as the primary news and information sources. This happened when the Internet was invented. Through the Internet, the public get what they want but actually not what they should have. However, censorship on the Internet is definitely impossible. The world of the Internet is vast and borderless; too wide to be controlled by anybody.

But it does not means that the job for journalists will be easier because to maintain attracting new users to visit the site is eventually hard and media people must know their key role which is to provide surprise for the users to keep waiting and wanting for more. With each new unique story they feature on the sites, this will keep the users engaged and intrigued to stay loyal with the sites.

Nevertheless, the rise of the Internet does not mean that newspapers and television are doing a poor job in delivering information for the public. Internet has some drawbacks as well such as fake information and unreliable sources. Mostly, the news reported on the newspapers and televisions are more trustworthy.

According to Fallow, the development of the new media will bring several worries to everyone. He said that this will become an age of lies, idiocy, and no facts can be trusted anymore. Plus, the media will no longer be able to cover all stories thoroughly due to the fast speed of, mostly, everything! Furthermore, our capabilities as the users to think and making accurate decisions will also depreciate because of the distractions done by the new media.

Yet, to me, it is still too early for us to judge and discriminate the new media. Yes, they might bring some negative impacts towards us as the users but I believe that when it comes to development and modernism, we must face certain degrees of sacrifices in order to move on to a higher level of quality in our lives. In fact, information is vital and without the media, we can never get any information. Without information, what is there left for us in order to move forward.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/learning-to-love-the-shallow-divisive-unreliable-new-media/8415/3/?single_page=true 

Week 2 ::PR stunt or the new journalism? The titans of public relations are going direct to viewers and readers::

By:  Rubiah binti Ibrahim  2009608748

PR has a role in reshaping news using the new media. The time of the Public relations versus the reporter hound is over. We all create news that goes directly to readers. Brands are covering their own beat, often exceptionally well. You can call what PR does “creating content” and what reporters do “journalism” but to the readers, it is all news and information. They are not only taking the bread from the table of a weakened advertising sector but encroaching onto the old territory of television and press companies. 

This article discussed about Edelman, an American owned PR firm with 51 offices around the world. Edelman has done a good PR job in promoting its own brand. The public relations sectors are struggling to stand out and some of the big PR agencies have had a pretty tough couple of years. Edelman has used that as an opportunity to raise the bar with its brand. The weakness of traditional advertising is encouraging businesses to demand a greater profile within editorial content. 

Therefore, they are giving brands the opportunity to think more about technologies and content, Edelman’s strategy is altogether different. Edelman hired Richard Sambrook the former head of BBC News and has given him the title of ‘Chief Content Officer’ which caused surprise to the media. Sambrook was positive that Edelman’s clients must take their message directly to the consumer. He believes that every company has to be a media company in their own right, telling stories through websites, branded entertainment, video, iPad and mobile applications. The fragmentation of traditional media, with shrinking audiences are decline in trust, they believe by converting to new media such as generating blog, video and website can boost their company’s reputation. 

The company is not moving into the news business, but it is seeking a reputation for high-quality content because editorial values are important and content has to have credibility and integrity. We are at a moment when a lot of the traditional lines between PR, consulting, advertising and broadcasting are blurring. There’s this idea that PR is the medium for the age of dialogue and social media. Nowadays, Journalist have often taken the PR coin, the sector is boosting up by its current status in the media hierarchy. The root of the issue is that the popularity of social media platforms and the interactivity that they offer consumers has given public relations firms, which have always had to argue their case, an advantage over ad companies that have specialized the “push messaging”. 

Another reason the rise of social networks has allowed PR to stand alongside advertising and other media disciplines, is that it is openly measurable. For years the only metrics PRs had to prove their worth were advertising value equivalents or number of clippings. Now there are excess that can give an insight into how far a message has gone, who has read it, acted on it and passed it on. Consumers are increasingly media savvy and able to cut right through. In the age of social media, the role of PR is no longer to spin stories in the mainstream press but to help organizations engage openly and honestly with the public.

The way to counter that is for businesses to stop hiding behind polished messages and slick spokesmen, and to start talking with the public like intelligent human beings. Social media channels make it easier to do this, but only if businesses approach them intelligently instead of just trying to use them as another tool for broadcasting. Time spent writing press releases has been moved into writing corporate blog posts, writing bi-lines for CEOs has moved to running their twitter streams. This shift is more of an evolution that it is a "revolution" in my opinion, we are seeing the next evolution in the communications method, we have moved from the traditional ways to the Twitter and Facebook , it is these things that are now shaping public opinion

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/pr-stunt-or-the-new-journalism-the-titans-of-public-relations-are-going-direct-to-viewers-and-readers-1989936.html  

Week 2 ::Four Ways Brands Can Use Social Media in New Product Launches::

By:  Normah binti Hassan  2009459324 

As we all know, using social media are now becoming a trend in promoting a new product.  Many organizations are using this medium to compliment their traditional marketing and PR activities. According to the writer, George Guildford; Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, enabling them to interact with customers and introduce product and campaign concepts in a way previously unavailable. There are four reasons why more brands are now using social media as a part of their marketing and PR strategies for new product launches.   

1. Create early ‘buzz’ around the product –connecting with potential consumer through social media is a fast way to increase the brand name and develop word-of-mouth. Besides, if companies are able to get public talking about their new product and campaign in their own social media profiles via “likes” and shared posts, it can increase in consumer awareness. Facebook is one of perfect place to promote new brands and create awareness about new product by posting teasers, promo videos and even apps. 
2.  Utilizes customer and fan feedback –in launching of new products, it is important for brands to pay attention to their customers respond as much as possible, as example, by receiving the feedback from customer about their perception of a campaign or product helps them to change their strategies and approach accordingly. Furthermore, social media help the brands to test new ideas, engaging companies to be innovative in their approach and adapt new idea that posted in feedback from their consumer in order to develop and focus upon the ideas that work. 
3. Enhance and extend traditional marketing and PR activities – through social media, brands can also tie in their marketing and PR strategies with mobile marketing, SMS and exclusive content accessible on smart phones. The good example of new product launches by using the social media are launched by Sony Ericsson Company. They use facebook as their channel to engage with their potential customer which is youngster. The launch of their latest smart phone, Xperia comes with many contest, mystery post and promotional videos. Sony Ericsson was able to utilize its social media channels to raise awareness about its new product.
4. Competitions and rewards –companies are able to reward those fans and followers that are sharing, liking, posting, re-tweeting and generally talking about their new products. Besides, introducing new product launches with Facebook and Twitter competitions, the company can reward their customers with special offers, exclusive discounts, additional content, and even free products. 

As the conclusion, it is important that the focus remains on ‘utilising’ social media as part of a wider strategy, rather than ‘relying’ on social media to launch the product. Even though we can see lots of unique campaign through Social media that may give more impact in promoting their product, we should not depends on one channel and forget about traditional marketing and other PR activities. Based on the article, the most success is often seen by those brands that are able to effectively integrate their social media, marketing and PR efforts into a focused, innovative and overarching narrative - creating engagement, interaction and consumer ‘buzz’ across multiple platforms as a result.

http://socialmediatoday.com/george-guildford/268906/four-ways-brands-can-utilise-social-media-maximise-launch-new-products