Wow those demos are so even, why bother even reading that infographic?
It seems that no matter how advanced and universal the social media may be, you still get the same levels of stupidity from one medium to the other.
There's an invisible barrier of "im better than you" set out in twitter and yet all the same complaints and cat-fights exist on twitter as they would on Facebook and the dwindling Myspace.
Its an absolute dereliction of social conduct and thats fine so long as you yourself dont fall into the traps set before you.
Facebook now is more of a political machine than a "look what I did", some complain about that, I enjoy it. Its good to see highschoolers and college students alike complain about watching arguments unfold on Facebook.
Sadly a majority of the arguments are mere marching orders from one side or the other. A well thought out picture with 59K likes and 3K comments. A fallacy-laden picture with a graphic like
"Lucy didnt brush her teeth and now she got gunned down in the streets by liberal dentists, THANKS OBAMA!"
Facebook holds that social commentary of people either feeding the trolls who post these pictures, or people whom see it and decide to log-out for good. Since facebook is largely powered by the users, there's not much that can stop a downward spiral in American/UK daily visits.
This is where twitter shines, you have a 1-1/1-99999 user system where anyone can move about anywhere with the proper feeds and keep perfect records of wins and losses in "internet fights". The visibility allows for these otherwise tagged "facebook trolls" to get assigned a strong status of "oh he does this to everybody and never admits when he's beaten, just look at his previous tweets"
Because of this permanent system, users who want to keep their followers are keen to tread-softly when stepping on those 50% landmines of the population's opinion.
This is why you'll be hard-pressed to find any celebrities or politicians taking any hard stances on most any issue; if they are to grab 51% but live in a republican/democratic area, they are better off not saying "Abortion sux =)" or "Abortion is awesome =)"
As for the A.R.C? Meh, probably somebody logged in on a phone, took it home, then tweeted without logging out. Ive seen this done before with email accounts on public computers.
The convergence of Public Relations and social media is in its prime right now, in this moment. Public Relations would be nothing and go nowhere if social media was not used. It is the best tool for targeting a specific audience, gathering data, keeping in constant contact with consumers, etc. It's the ultimate tool.
Twitter and Facebook both have pros and cons when it comes to maketing and focusing your message. The very first thing we are taught is KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. That couldn't ring any truer than in this field. Knowing your audience is beneficial because different age groups use different types of social media. If the target audience for your message is people 40-up, Facebook will be the most effective tool for reaching that audience. However, if the audience is majority 18-40 years of age, Twitter should be the marketing tool.
Twitter is effective in following top trends and what people are talking about through their hash tag tool. It is easy to network through twitter, and easier for people to share your tweets through re-tweeting. Facebook's most effective tool for PR is their advertising tool. Through their software, it is easy to narrow down to a very specific target audience.
Through the utility and versatility of social media, marketers can more easily begin to brand themselves. It is easy to constantly show the visual appeals, among other things, that brand a company. If they establish a prominent presence online, people begin to recognize the company by the way they post, what kind of pictures or videos they post. That is the purpose of branding. Define who you are without having to tell everyone who you are. They should just know. Everyone shoots for the Nike "swoop" status.
Social media is beginning to drive the land of PR and marketing. These fields are having to adapt to this change, but boy is it exciting. Social media opens so many doors so quickly into the individual minds of your consumers. The key is knowing how to use it to benefit yourself and your company.
Guilty of putting a personal tweet on a company or group feed (see multiple cases of deleting tweets on @DixieAthletics), I can feel with the person who probably lost their job with the Red Cross.
What struck me were the details inside the Facebook vs. Twitter infographic. At face value, it is easy to understand the 2010 information is now ancient. Still, I came up with three observations:
1) Young people love social media, it doesn’t matter what kind – With a few quick calculations, we find that 364 million people between the ages of 13 to 35 using social media. That is roughly the same amount of the estimated work force in Europe in the year 2050, according to a United Nations projection (http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/ReplMigED/Europe.pdf, 83). No matter how you say it, that is a lot of people typing away at keyboards, sharing links and retweeting. This younger generation seems to want connection with friend and family, but it also connects us to point number two.
2) Twitter is the preferred social media for brands and news – When you wanted breaking news in the 1980’s, you watched your local newscast a 4, 5, 6, or 11 p.m. and hoped for the best coverage. As cable television evolved, you turned to CNN – I can remember vividly lerning about the untimely passing of Princess Diana via CNN in 1997. But now, nothing happens in the world without a tweet. The beauty of social media is that a traditional journalist doesn’t have to break the news either (we can all thank Sohaib Athar for that). Brands can also break news and promote their products quickly on Twitter. Great examples include JetBlue, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Nike (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-20-brands-on-twitter-ranked-by-influence-with-customers-2012-7?op=1).
3) For “social” interactions, Facebook is still preferred – If I want to show you pictures of my trip or vent about a sociopath, the limit of 140 characters is a huge issue. No worries for Facebook – photo albums, sharing links, etc. In 2010, Facebook seemed like the only avenue to share big chunks of info. Since the production of the infographic, photo sharing mediums like Instagram and SnapChat have tried to impede on this social interaction. But Facebook still seems to be the standard bearer of keeping in touch with that ex from high school.
I hope someone takes the time to update that infographic in the upcoming months. My thought would be that the percentages might skew toward lower ages and higher usage.
Social Media is quickly if not already the biggest and newest area of marketing. The other night I was talking to my friends dad who is about to open up a new mechanic shop. He knows that I am graduating with my mass communication major and wanted to talk to me about social media and his marketing strategies.
I told him the benefits of having a Facebook page, a twitter account and then he was also interested in a blog as well. Talking over with him he was telling me what his marketing guy had explained to him so far. With him trying to market to a younger demographic then usual for a mechanic shop he knows that these types of marketing tools can be the most effective. I also was sure to explain to him how he might not realize it but managing all of those accounts can be a full time job in itself. He also mentioned pinterest and instagram for his shop.
I was surprised at the information he knew about all of these new social media tools. The more I talked to him about all the benefits the more he realized the many different options he had and benefits he would be gaining by having these social media tools. I think that if you are using them correctly then it is an ok way to do public relations. I think that to often people get to comfortable with twitter and facebook and post their life stories on it and just complain all the time. Which is one of the reasons I rarely get on facebook now.
I think that as long as a company sets out to do what they need to do to keep their brand name out there and in the minds of the consumers then it is ok to do this kind of marketing. When they act like teenagers and put ridiculous posts then I believe they have gotten to far into the social media trap.
The social media one of the biggest marketing tools now days. The internet is more effective now than it has ever been in that pass years,and it is ta place where people do a lot of marketing.
Facebook and twitter are some of the majors sites for marketing because everyone is at least on one, or both of the networks. Facebook and twitter are great for any types of marketing because marketing for both younger, and older demographics is possible. I personally would use both Facebook and twitter if i ever have to do any kind of marketing because i totally can get the audience i want, or needs to get. People don't need to read the news anymore to get the information they want, they can get more information on Facebook and twitter than they can eve get on Facebook. To me Facebook is way better than twitter because i feel more comfortable on Facebook than i do on twitter.However twitter is so popular now because it is something new, and people like new things. Another reason why people like twitter is because it is different. You don't have to add people, but you have to follow instead. Facebook, and Twitter are two important social networks to many companies and the more those companies do the marketing right on these two social networks, the better the companies become
What surprised me was the amount of people on both Twitter and Facebook. I assumed it would have been more. It seems that most people have one, if not both, of these social media applications.
I don't have accounts on either one of these applications and it is interesting to look at certain events unfold on each app from an outsider perspective. When the election happened, everyone was talking about it. Not just about the debates or news, but the drama that erupted on Facebook, and to a lesser extant Twitter, over the whole election. I would watch friends whip out their smart phones, snort in derision, and fire back tweets, pokes, or whatevers over some comment from a 'friend.' These months weren't even people bitching about the actually election. No, they were bitching about what their friends said about the election on Facebook. Needless to say, I am glad I was not in that noise.
I do see the utility of having these accounts. Staying in touch with friends, showing pictures to family and friends, and tweeting stupid things for the whole world to read. Lord knows I have thought of starting a Twitter account. As of now, the pros don't out way the cons for using these social networks.
Yes, I know my privacy is steadily shrinking, but I don't have to help it disappear. For now, I will enjoy the little bit of privacy I have left.
I've been thinking about this post for a while. Yesterday, after the events in Boston there is another example of "to tweet or not to tweet". Unfortunately, we don't have a sarcasm font in our society and its pretty hard to convey sarcasm in 140 characters or less if you aren't constantly doing sarcastic posts. Fox News contributor Erik Rush forgot this fact, and had the following twitter exchange: http://imgur.com/EjVIAJQ
The offending tweets have now been deleted, but in our age of screen captures and instant virality all it takes is one stupid mistake to lose years (or even a careers worth) of credibility. No doubt this tweet was in poor taste and poor in timing. Not only did his tweet discredit himself, but also further pushed the image of Fox news to extreme, unprofessional and insensitive. I don't know how often this man was a contributor for them, but it doesn't really matter because once its out and goes viral (which this series of tweets did) the damage has been done and people won't forget no matter the PR work you do to try and get people to forget.
With all that being said, my first thought about this is "what's next"? One of the undeniable trends you see with social media is that these sites grow, become popular and then something happens (either uncontrolled growth and spam or controlled annoying advertising) and they begin to wane into annals of history. I recently read this article which is highly related to this disussion. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/facebook-fatigue-among-teens-should-freak-out-marketers
It provides a slightly newer set of stats, but also shows how sites have either grown or shrunk over the past year or so. Interestingly enough, facebook is on its way out (surprise) and twitter is the big thing right now. This is bound to follow the same cycle however, so the sites with the biggest PR influence over the all important teenage demographic will be those who have a strong presence on the up and coming social media. Its a constant battle, but if fought well can provide highly lucrative and influential results for your company or client.
If you are part of a PR team you better sure as hell be up on your social media. That is just my thought.
Social media is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to market a product or company. It actually goes a long a lot with the previous post when talking about the idea that people sell apps or devices better than any ad or billboard can. That is the same thing with any product. If people read posts about how much people like things they are more apt to buy the same thing, or at least give the product buzz.
If used efficiently and in the same way. I feel that social media can be the best friend of PR workers. Not only is it a well-known and highly utilized platform for the general public, but there are ways, such as hashtags or trending topics, to see how much your product is being talked about by people outside of your own company.
If you know me then you are aware I am kind of a hashtag whore…I am willing to not only admit this, but embrace it. I think that it is a tool that PR personnel are able use to cheaply become better known and, if clever enough, unknowingly weasel into the social media platform of tweets, insta-shots, and daily speech without overwhelmingly bombarding people.
Social media is the best thing that has happened to the industry.
As much as I do love the ways that Social media can help with PR, I am aware that there are some cons. As we saw from the Red Cross tweet, social media gone wrong can be a very quick way to damage a reputation. Social media is a platform that is hard to get yourself built up on and it a very fragile to maintain.
Social Media is the place to go for advertisement. The market is huge. The people who use twitter, Facebook,etc. need to be careful about what they write/post. The Red Cross made a huge mistake. Kind of stupid if you ask me. Why would a huge company post things like that on twitter? Its sad to say that person probably got fired who posted that. There are many pros and cons in using social media for advertisement. As long as people are smart about what they are posting than they should be okay.
My father just got a Facebook page for his local business. He has had this business for about 10 years. After many years he realized that Facebook could help his business grow. In the past 3 months its safe to say that his business is growing. I just talked with him and for the first time in a long time he has a more positive outlook.
I'm not one for twitter as much. I would have to say Facebook is better. If I would experiment with twitter more and get an actual account, I might be surprised about how much I like it. For now I'm going to stick with Facebook.
I think the PR world would is eating this all up. So what if a tweet gets you in hot water there are easy ways to tweet out of it. So much crap goes down on twitter you can't possibly remember all the offensive things that were said. Sure as Brandon pointed out a Fox reporter said something offensive and maybe hurt his career but honestly if you give it a week, people will forget about it. Not the competitors mind you, like CNN, they will ride that train until another pops up, and it will. Fox will do the same to CNN and it will be a pointless battle of who tweeted what. While one tries to ruin the others' credibility. It's just another ploy to get views and it works. It will soon run its course and our age of yellow journalism will hopefully come to an end. Twitter might even be our guiding star.
The judgments people derive from 140 characters just baffles me. It's interesting how people act offended when there really is no offense. I guess this is all because people love gossip, I can't stand it, but I can't say I'm completely clean of it. Mine just isn't strung across the internet, and I plan on keeping it that way.
There are several elements to focus on when it comes to looking at Facebook and Twitter. I personally feel that there are both pros and cons that come from the two social media platforms. Both platforms are used to bring awareness and attention to either a business, product or service. Though awareness is good for growth, there needs to be more than just that. Meaning, these social media platforms need to provide a way for viewers to take action. With that in mind i feel that Facebook does a better job giving businesses an opportunity to create landing pages. Landing pages are a great way for businesses to not only bring attention to their products and services, but giving their customers to act.
There are several ways to advertise with social media. I have found that there is a particular triangle that does well working with different businees. A businesses can have two of the three following elelments in their social media platform: Their page can be fun, Informative or helpful. When it comes to the American Red Cross social media platforms i personally feel that their pages need to be helpful and informative to their followers. By trying to have those two components and adding in the "Fun" part by being goofy or making unnecessary comments can bring damages to the business. Now, I'm not saying that businesses can not be humors there just needs to be structure in doing so. Writers must be creative and throughout thoroughly and centered on businesses values and goals.
Those numbers and percentages of the people that use Facebook and Twitter to me were outrageous. I had no idea how big it really was until I saw those numbers. 500 million users for Facebook is crazy. I understand now why it’s one of the largest marketing tools today. I thought it was interesting the difference between the two based on those categories. I would have never thought that more people at the age of 35-44 would use Twitter more than those from the age of 18-25.
It looks like from this chart the answer is personally to not Tweet. Facebook is above and beyond in the number of uses that Twitter has. Facebook is used more on a daily bases as well. Don’t get me wrong 106 million users is a lot and can create great social media but along with all these users come along drama. That’s the part that I don’t necessarily like about Facebook. The drama that comes along with it almost gets in the way of good advertisement or good social media. People use these social media tools to vamp their personal problems and ideas to the world. Well sorry for those that do that but the rest of the world doesn’t really care to listen or see it. That’s what face to face communication is for with someone that you are close to. I believe that Facebook and Twitter could be better and more useful without the drama.
That face or statistic that didn’t surprise me on that chart was the percentage of female users on both Facebook and Twitter. I had an idea that the majority of users would be females. For whatever reason that might be that statistic didn’t surprise me. I thought it was interesting though that the wealthiest making 100K or more a year don’t hardly use Facebook and Twitter. What that is telling me is that Facebook and Twitter are getting in the way of making money. People spend too much time on these accounts rather than doing their work or focusing on making money. I don’t know if that is exactly true or not but from this chart and the statistics along with it that’s the idea and information that I get out of it. So maybe don’t Tweet or Facebook and focus on those things at hand like making money and being successful as opposed to being distracted and wasting time on these accounts.
I guess im surprised that the amount of Twitter users isn't closer to the Users of Face Book.
I myself only use Face Book. I only recently in the past few months have been a user of Instagram because I was boycotting it until I had an Iphone.
Im probably a little behind in the social media world but as for PR I feel like based on what I know about it using events that might be in bad taste is not an uncommon practice to get attention for a company. It may seem like an issue now because social media spreads it to the masses.
Any press is good press right? "If people aren't talking about your brand, then you don't exist," said Rob Schwartz, global creative president at Omnicom Group
Wow those demos are so even, why bother even reading that infographic?
ReplyDeleteIt seems that no matter how advanced and universal the social media may be, you still get the same levels of stupidity from one medium to the other.
There's an invisible barrier of "im better than you" set out in twitter and yet all the same complaints and cat-fights exist on twitter as they would on Facebook and the dwindling Myspace.
Its an absolute dereliction of social conduct and thats fine so long as you yourself dont fall into the traps set before you.
Facebook now is more of a political machine than a "look what I did", some complain about that, I enjoy it. Its good to see highschoolers and college students alike complain about watching arguments unfold on Facebook.
Sadly a majority of the arguments are mere marching orders from one side or the other. A well thought out picture with 59K likes and 3K comments. A fallacy-laden picture with a graphic like
"Lucy didnt brush her teeth and now she got gunned down in the streets by liberal dentists, THANKS OBAMA!"
Facebook holds that social commentary of people either feeding the trolls who post these pictures, or people whom see it and decide to log-out for good. Since facebook is largely powered by the users, there's not much that can stop a downward spiral in American/UK daily visits.
This is where twitter shines, you have a 1-1/1-99999 user system where anyone can move about anywhere with the proper feeds and keep perfect records of wins and losses in "internet fights". The visibility allows for these otherwise tagged "facebook trolls" to get assigned a strong status of "oh he does this to everybody and never admits when he's beaten, just look at his previous tweets"
Because of this permanent system, users who want to keep their followers are keen to tread-softly when stepping on those 50% landmines of the population's opinion.
This is why you'll be hard-pressed to find any celebrities or politicians taking any hard stances on most any issue; if they are to grab 51% but live in a republican/democratic area, they are better off not saying "Abortion sux =)"
or "Abortion is awesome =)"
As for the A.R.C? Meh, probably somebody logged in on a phone, took it home, then tweeted without logging out. Ive seen this done before with email accounts on public computers.
The convergence of Public Relations and social media is in its prime right now, in this moment. Public Relations would be nothing and go nowhere if social media was not used. It is the best tool for targeting a specific audience, gathering data, keeping in constant contact with consumers, etc. It's the ultimate tool.
ReplyDeleteTwitter and Facebook both have pros and cons when it comes to maketing and focusing your message. The very first thing we are taught is KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. That couldn't ring any truer than in this field. Knowing your audience is beneficial because different age groups use different types of social media. If the target audience for your message is people 40-up, Facebook will be the most effective tool for reaching that audience. However, if the audience is majority 18-40 years of age, Twitter should be the marketing tool.
Twitter is effective in following top trends and what people are talking about through their hash tag tool. It is easy to network through twitter, and easier for people to share your tweets through re-tweeting. Facebook's most effective tool for PR is their advertising tool. Through their software, it is easy to narrow down to a very specific target audience.
Through the utility and versatility of social media, marketers can more easily begin to brand themselves. It is easy to constantly show the visual appeals, among other things, that brand a company. If they establish a prominent presence online, people begin to recognize the company by the way they post, what kind of pictures or videos they post. That is the purpose of branding. Define who you are without having to tell everyone who you are. They should just know. Everyone shoots for the Nike "swoop" status.
Social media is beginning to drive the land of PR and marketing. These fields are having to adapt to this change, but boy is it exciting. Social media opens so many doors so quickly into the individual minds of your consumers. The key is knowing how to use it to benefit yourself and your company.
Guilty of putting a personal tweet on a company or group feed (see multiple cases of deleting tweets on @DixieAthletics), I can feel with the person who probably lost their job with the Red Cross.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me were the details inside the Facebook vs. Twitter infographic. At face value, it is easy to understand the 2010 information is now ancient. Still, I came up with three observations:
1) Young people love social media, it doesn’t matter what kind – With a few quick calculations, we find that 364 million people between the ages of 13 to 35 using social media. That is roughly the same amount of the estimated work force in Europe in the year 2050, according to a United Nations projection (http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/ReplMigED/Europe.pdf, 83). No matter how you say it, that is a lot of people typing away at keyboards, sharing links and retweeting. This younger generation seems to want connection with friend and family, but it also connects us to point number two.
2) Twitter is the preferred social media for brands and news – When you wanted breaking news in the 1980’s, you watched your local newscast a 4, 5, 6, or 11 p.m. and hoped for the best coverage. As cable television evolved, you turned to CNN – I can remember vividly lerning about the untimely passing of Princess Diana via CNN in 1997. But now, nothing happens in the world without a tweet. The beauty of social media is that a traditional journalist doesn’t have to break the news either (we can all thank Sohaib Athar for that). Brands can also break news and promote their products quickly on Twitter. Great examples include JetBlue, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Nike (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-20-brands-on-twitter-ranked-by-influence-with-customers-2012-7?op=1).
3) For “social” interactions, Facebook is still preferred – If I want to show you pictures of my trip or vent about a sociopath, the limit of 140 characters is a huge issue. No worries for Facebook – photo albums, sharing links, etc. In 2010, Facebook seemed like the only avenue to share big chunks of info. Since the production of the infographic, photo sharing mediums like Instagram and SnapChat have tried to impede on this social interaction. But Facebook still seems to be the standard bearer of keeping in touch with that ex from high school.
I hope someone takes the time to update that infographic in the upcoming months. My thought would be that the percentages might skew toward lower ages and higher usage.
Social Media is quickly if not already the biggest and newest area of marketing. The other night I was talking to my friends dad who is about to open up a new mechanic shop. He knows that I am graduating with my mass communication major and wanted to talk to me about social media and his marketing strategies.
ReplyDeleteI told him the benefits of having a Facebook page, a twitter account and then he was also interested in a blog as well. Talking over with him he was telling me what his marketing guy had explained to him so far. With him trying to market to a younger demographic then usual for a mechanic shop he knows that these types of marketing tools can be the most effective. I also was sure to explain to him how he might not realize it but managing all of those accounts can be a full time job in itself. He also mentioned pinterest and instagram for his shop.
I was surprised at the information he knew about all of these new social media tools. The more I talked to him about all the benefits the more he realized the many different options he had and benefits he would be gaining by having these social media tools. I think that if you are using them correctly then it is an ok way to do public relations. I think that to often people get to comfortable with twitter and facebook and post their life stories on it and just complain all the time. Which is one of the reasons I rarely get on facebook now.
I think that as long as a company sets out to do what they need to do to keep their brand name out there and in the minds of the consumers then it is ok to do this kind of marketing. When they act like teenagers and put ridiculous posts then I believe they have gotten to far into the social media trap.
The social media one of the biggest marketing tools now days. The internet is more effective now than it has ever been in that pass years,and it is ta place where people do a lot of marketing.
ReplyDeleteFacebook and twitter are some of the majors sites for marketing because everyone is at least on one, or both of the networks. Facebook and twitter are great for any types of marketing because marketing for both younger, and older demographics is possible. I personally would use both Facebook and twitter if i ever have to do any kind of marketing because i totally can get the audience i want, or needs to get.
People don't need to read the news anymore to get the information they want, they can get more information on Facebook and twitter than they can eve get on Facebook.
To me Facebook is way better than twitter because i feel more comfortable on Facebook than i do on twitter.However twitter is so popular now because it is something new, and people like new things. Another reason why people like twitter is because it is different. You don't have to add people, but you have to follow instead.
Facebook, and Twitter are two important social networks to many companies and the more those companies do the marketing right on these two social networks, the better the companies become
What surprised me was the amount of people on both Twitter and Facebook. I assumed it would have been more. It seems that most people have one, if not both, of these social media applications.
ReplyDeleteI don't have accounts on either one of these applications and it is interesting to look at certain events unfold on each app from an outsider perspective. When the election happened, everyone was talking about it. Not just about the debates or news, but the drama that erupted on Facebook, and to a lesser extant Twitter, over the whole election. I would watch friends whip out their smart phones, snort in derision, and fire back tweets, pokes, or whatevers over some comment from a 'friend.' These months weren't even people bitching about the actually election. No, they were bitching about what their friends said about the election on Facebook. Needless to say, I am glad I was not in that noise.
I do see the utility of having these accounts. Staying in touch with friends, showing pictures to family and friends, and tweeting stupid things for the whole world to read. Lord knows I have thought of starting a Twitter account. As of now, the pros don't out way the cons for using these social networks.
Yes, I know my privacy is steadily shrinking, but I don't have to help it disappear. For now, I will enjoy the little bit of privacy I have left.
I've been thinking about this post for a while. Yesterday, after the events in Boston there is another example of "to tweet or not to tweet". Unfortunately, we don't have a sarcasm font in our society and its pretty hard to convey sarcasm in 140 characters or less if you aren't constantly doing sarcastic posts. Fox News contributor Erik Rush forgot this fact, and had the following twitter exchange:
ReplyDeletehttp://imgur.com/EjVIAJQ
The offending tweets have now been deleted, but in our age of screen captures and instant virality all it takes is one stupid mistake to lose years (or even a careers worth) of credibility. No doubt this tweet was in poor taste and poor in timing. Not only did his tweet discredit himself, but also further pushed the image of Fox news to extreme, unprofessional and insensitive. I don't know how often this man was a contributor for them, but it doesn't really matter because once its out and goes viral (which this series of tweets did) the damage has been done and people won't forget no matter the PR work you do to try and get people to forget.
With all that being said, my first thought about this is "what's next"? One of the undeniable trends you see with social media is that these sites grow, become popular and then something happens (either uncontrolled growth and spam or controlled annoying advertising) and they begin to wane into annals of history. I recently read this article which is highly related to this disussion.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/facebook-fatigue-among-teens-should-freak-out-marketers
It provides a slightly newer set of stats, but also shows how sites have either grown or shrunk over the past year or so. Interestingly enough, facebook is on its way out (surprise) and twitter is the big thing right now. This is bound to follow the same cycle however, so the sites with the biggest PR influence over the all important teenage demographic will be those who have a strong presence on the up and coming social media. Its a constant battle, but if fought well can provide highly lucrative and influential results for your company or client.
If you are part of a PR team you better sure as hell be up on your social media. That is just my thought.
ReplyDeleteSocial media is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to market a product or company. It actually goes a long a lot with the previous post when talking about the idea that people sell apps or devices better than any ad or billboard can. That is the same thing with any product. If people read posts about how much people like things they are more apt to buy the same thing, or at least give the product buzz.
If used efficiently and in the same way. I feel that social media can be the best friend of PR workers. Not only is it a well-known and highly utilized platform for the general public, but there are ways, such as hashtags or trending topics, to see how much your product is being talked about by people outside of your own company.
If you know me then you are aware I am kind of a hashtag whore…I am willing to not only admit this, but embrace it. I think that it is a tool that PR personnel are able use to cheaply become better known and, if clever enough, unknowingly weasel into the social media platform of tweets, insta-shots, and daily speech without overwhelmingly bombarding people.
Social media is the best thing that has happened to the industry.
As much as I do love the ways that Social media can help with PR, I am aware that there are some cons. As we saw from the Red Cross tweet, social media gone wrong can be a very quick way to damage a reputation. Social media is a platform that is hard to get yourself built up on and it a very fragile to maintain.
Social Media is the place to go for advertisement. The market is huge. The people who use twitter, Facebook,etc. need to be careful about what they write/post. The Red Cross made a huge mistake. Kind of stupid if you ask me. Why would a huge company post things like that on twitter? Its sad to say that person probably got fired who posted that. There are many pros and cons in using social media for advertisement. As long as people are smart about what they are posting than they should be okay.
ReplyDeleteMy father just got a Facebook page for his local business. He has had this business for about 10 years. After many years he realized that Facebook could help his business grow. In the past 3 months its safe to say that his business is growing. I just talked with him and for the first time in a long time he has a more positive outlook.
I'm not one for twitter as much. I would have to say Facebook is better. If I would experiment with twitter more and get an actual account, I might be surprised about how much I like it. For now I'm going to stick with Facebook.
I think the PR world would is eating this all up. So what if a tweet gets you in hot water there are easy ways to tweet out of it. So much crap goes down on twitter you can't possibly remember all the offensive things that were said. Sure as Brandon pointed out a Fox reporter said something offensive and maybe hurt his career but honestly if you give it a week, people will forget about it. Not the competitors mind you, like CNN, they will ride that train until another pops up, and it will. Fox will do the same to CNN and it will be a pointless battle of who tweeted what. While one tries to ruin the others' credibility. It's just another ploy to get views and it works. It will soon run its course and our age of yellow journalism will hopefully come to an end. Twitter might even be our guiding star.
ReplyDeleteThe judgments people derive from 140 characters just baffles me. It's interesting how people act offended when there really is no offense. I guess this is all because people love gossip, I can't stand it, but I can't say I'm completely clean of it. Mine just isn't strung across the internet, and I plan on keeping it that way.
There are several elements to focus on when it comes to looking at Facebook and Twitter. I personally feel that there are both pros and cons that come from the two social media platforms. Both platforms are used to bring awareness and attention to either a business, product or service. Though awareness is good for growth, there needs to be more than just that. Meaning, these social media platforms need to provide a way for viewers to take action. With that in mind i feel that Facebook does a better job giving businesses an opportunity to create landing pages. Landing pages are a great way for businesses to not only bring attention to their products and services, but giving their customers to act.
ReplyDeleteThere are several ways to advertise with social media. I have found that there is a particular triangle that does well working with different businees. A businesses can have two of the three following elelments in their social media platform: Their page can be fun, Informative or helpful. When it comes to the American Red Cross social media platforms i personally feel that their pages need to be helpful and informative to their followers. By trying to have those two components and adding in the "Fun" part by being goofy or making unnecessary comments can bring damages to the business. Now, I'm not saying that businesses can not be humors there just needs to be structure in doing so. Writers must be creative and throughout thoroughly and centered on businesses values and goals.
Those numbers and percentages of the people that use Facebook and Twitter to me were outrageous. I had no idea how big it really was until I saw those numbers. 500 million users for Facebook is crazy. I understand now why it’s one of the largest marketing tools today. I thought it was interesting the difference between the two based on those categories. I would have never thought that more people at the age of 35-44 would use Twitter more than those from the age of 18-25.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like from this chart the answer is personally to not Tweet. Facebook is above and beyond in the number of uses that Twitter has. Facebook is used more on a daily bases as well. Don’t get me wrong 106 million users is a lot and can create great social media but along with all these users come along drama. That’s the part that I don’t necessarily like about Facebook. The drama that comes along with it almost gets in the way of good advertisement or good social media. People use these social media tools to vamp their personal problems and ideas to the world. Well sorry for those that do that but the rest of the world doesn’t really care to listen or see it. That’s what face to face communication is for with someone that you are close to. I believe that Facebook and Twitter could be better and more useful without the drama.
That face or statistic that didn’t surprise me on that chart was the percentage of female users on both Facebook and Twitter. I had an idea that the majority of users would be females. For whatever reason that might be that statistic didn’t surprise me. I thought it was interesting though that the wealthiest making 100K or more a year don’t hardly use Facebook and Twitter. What that is telling me is that Facebook and Twitter are getting in the way of making money. People spend too much time on these accounts rather than doing their work or focusing on making money. I don’t know if that is exactly true or not but from this chart and the statistics along with it that’s the idea and information that I get out of it. So maybe don’t Tweet or Facebook and focus on those things at hand like making money and being successful as opposed to being distracted and wasting time on these accounts.
I guess im surprised that the amount of Twitter users isn't closer to the Users of Face Book.
ReplyDeleteI myself only use Face Book. I only recently in the past few months have been a user of Instagram because I was boycotting it until I had an Iphone.
Im probably a little behind in the social media world but as for PR I feel like based on what I know about it using events that might be in bad taste is not an uncommon practice to get attention for a company. It may seem like an issue now because social media spreads it to the masses.
Any press is good press right? "If people aren't talking about your brand, then you don't exist," said Rob Schwartz, global creative president at Omnicom Group