Twitter and PR

Twitter is so commonly used in public relations sector to help organizations raise awareness of their brands and  communicate with their target audiences in time.  In this blog post, I will talk about some uses of Twitter in public relations and suggest  what organizations should do in terms of ensuring a successful Twitter PR.

1 - One -way Communication or two - way Communication?
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton set up Twitter pages. Obama has more than 6 million followers whereas Hillary has only less than 20 thousand. The reason why Obama is more popular than Hillary on Twitter, despite the fact that one is the president and one is the secretary of the state, Obama interacts with his followers from time to time and gives feedback - my friend was followed by Obama on Twitter and he was so excited! On the other hand, Hillary Clinton follows zero people and never interact with her audiences. From this case, we can learn that it is a bad idea that organization set up a twitter page just giving out information without receiving any. This kind of one way communication is doomed to fail.

2 - Customers Service
When a man called Jonathan Fields tweeted some doubts about American airline JetBlue, a few minutes later, he soon got the feedback from JetBlue, and solved the problem. JetBlue uses twitter as a monitor and tracking tool to answer customer' s queries in real time and also keep customer updated about the flight information and all relevant news. Using Twitter to solve customers' problem, to a great extent, shortens the response time for organizations and  it is much cheaper than using traditional customer service.

                                                            3 - Evaluation and monitor tool

Twitter helps a lot of organizations monitor comments made by customers about the brand, product or services. These voices of customers could help organization to get to know what they think, what they like, what needs improving and etc. Moreover, by monitoring organizations could sense whether crisis is going to happen and make early preparation for crisis.

4- Carry out PR campaign on Twitter
Taste live! once hold a PR campaign on Twitter. The company provided 5 different kinds of wine to people for free and chose a fixed date to discuss with people on Twitter how they feel about the wine. Don't even need a venue for wine tasting, people could share opinions without considering any constraints, such as location, and transportation etc. The company had a chance to have in-depth conversation with its customers and at the same time more potential customers were discovered through the influence of Twitter.

So the most important rule of using twitter in PR is to let your audiences know your existence and at the same time interact with them. Also, one last hint - don't tweet TOO much otherwise people would unfollow you!



Sources:  
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2587/3915512820_74a09a0254.jpg
http://www.katiebacon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/twitter_bird.jpg
http://twitter.com/#!/BarackObama
 http://twitter.com/#!/HRClinton
 http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/jetblue-twitter-customer-service-or-to-spy/#comment-3073

Augmented Reality in PR

Lynx augmented reality campaign in London Victoria Station

When people step onto a marker with Lynx symbol on it, an angel then falls on the ground in the digital video billboard at London Victoria Station. People could interact with the angel via the digital billboard. This technology is called augmented reality which is a relatively new technology that can be applied to PR campaigns.  A PR communication agency Lewis describes the use of  augmented reality quite well: “augmented reality… allows your customers to experience your product or service in a totally new way. Merging reality with computer generated graphics you can offer brand interaction on a new level, whether it is via a webcam or a smartphone; at a desk or walking around a city's streets.”  To make it simple, augmented reality is able to mix the real world into virtual one by means of webcam, smartphones etc.

There are several advantages of augmented reality when being used in PR campaigns . Firstly, people would pay more attention on the message the PR campaign is going to send out when interacting with whatever it is with the help of augmented reality. Therefore, the exposure of the message/brand/product is more likely to increase. Moreover, it is quite fun for people to interact with virtual world, they may share this with their friends. Consequently, more and more people will get involved in the campaign, brand awareness would be increased greatly.  Last but least, with augmented reality, organizations are able to communicate with their key publics in spaces, not being restricted by physical communication as well as the traditional media.
Although augmented reality has been used by various industries since 2009, such as film, shoes, NGO, watch, automobile and so forth, it is still a rather expensive technology  to be used, especially for those smaller companies. However, in the near future, it is likely that augmented reality will be widely used by organizations as a tool to send out key messages and to communicate with key publics.


Credits
http://www.lewispr.com/Innovation/Augmented-Reality.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality
http://www.computergraphica.com/2006/12/20/osgart-10-augmented-reality-software-development-kit/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFuUFeQIdpk

The Use of Social Networking Sites in PR

Recent years, social networking websites have become more and more popular all over the world.  Those websites are not only used by individuals for the purpose of  keeping in touch with friends, but also by companies for marketing/PR purposes. According to Harvard Business Review Analytic  Services Report, social networking sites are the most popular form of social media among all orgnizations, with the majority (87%) using sites like Facebook and twitter. The reason why social network sites are so popular is becausen practitioners can directly reach their target audiences in a cost effective way. There are four major uses of social networking websites when engaging in public relations.

1. Build your brand awareness
Social networking sites provide opportunities for both big companies and medium/small companies to publicize themselves in a cost effective way. Big companies with already popular brands could make the brands even popular; Medium/small companies could become more well –known by using those social networking websites through online PR campaigns. Moreover, a key feature of social network sites is its viral nature – because people like to share information which they find interesting and useful. When a company is carrying out an online PR campaign, someone mentions this campaign and your brand on a social network site, it is more likely other people pay attention on it and share it to their friends. It is much easier for companies to spread the messages and reach a much larger audiences.

2. Build relationships with your target audiences
It is essential for companies to build up good relationships with their target audiences. According to Grunig, two-way symmetric communication practices are a keystone for excellent PR. It is social networking websites that provide a platform for companies and their target audiences to communicate in an easier and more effective way.

3. Find the right channel
Different social network sites have different focuses, such as LinkedIn is a business oriented network websites; MySpace and Last.fm are connecting music lovers, etc.. Also the use of social network websites varies from different countries and culture.  For example,  Mixi is the most popular social network sites in Japan, Facebook and Twitter can’t be used in China and so forth. Therefore, PR practitioners are able to carry out different PR campaigns with various focuses on the right networking websites all depending on who/where their target audiences are.

4. Monitor and analysis tool 
PR practitioners could monitor the progress by social network sites and react/respond at once. For example, just simply by monitoring the feedback, PR practitioners are able to know what people like or don't like about your product/service or how they feel about your campaign etc; also PR practitioners could monitor the number of people's participation and the number of groups or fan pages have been created.




Credits:
http://asktristramlodge.com/build-business-relationships-social-networking-sites
http://www.sas.com/resources/whitepaper/wp_23348.pdf
http://technorati.com/lifestyle/travel/article/top-ten-travel-social-network-sites/
Tench, R. & Yeomans, L (2009) Exploring Public Relations. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

Fight against the Great Firewall of China

I excitingly shared my blog on Renren (Chinese Facebook) the other day, hoping to get some feedback from my friends in China, but all the feedback I've got was the same: "I can't open it". Not to my surprise, Blogspot is just another victim of Great Firewall of China.

Since the great firewall is working so hard in China, Facebook & Twitter were both undoubtedly blocked. As the most popular social websites in the world, both Facebook and Twitter are so widely used by all kinds of organizations as cost-effective PR tools throughout the world. Some people may wonder how Chinese organizations carry out online PR campaigns without those social websites such as Facebook. Well, we've got website clones - not only the functions but also the layouts are 95% the same as the original ones, such as Renren (Facebook), Fanfou (Twitter), ect. Although there's nothing to be proud of to have those website clones, they run amazingly well in China. Take Renren as an example, there are about 160 million registered users and more than thirty thousand public pages, which create by organizations and celebrities. What is more, QQ, which originally called OICQ (ICQ)  is the largest instant messaging service in China with 632 million registered users. Organizations set up QQ blogs correspondingly in order to attract Chinese netizens' attentions from the largest online community in China. 

When dealing with international publics, the Chinese social websites I mentioned above are not of any use. So what can those organizations do? Do they have to say goodbye to one of the greatest online PR tools? From what I've observed, most of the China-based organizations or Chinese media, which I followed on twitter or liked on Facebook, update at least once a day. It's not some magic spells. It is just a well-known secret for most of the people in China to climb over the Great Firewall. In this case, it makes little difference whether those websites were blocked in China or not (although sometimes it is not quite stable for people to get onto those blocked sites). Organizations in China are still able to access the blocked websites.

I don't know how long people in China have to fight against the Great Firewall. Not too long, I hope!

Sources are from: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renren

http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/03/03/china-internet-clones/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China

http://digitrends.proferochina.com/index.php/lp/behind-the-great-firewall-of-china/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China#Bypassing