Public Relations & The Impact of New Media Essay

human beings dealings is a pivotal fictitious character of any business beca riding habit it is the most h obsolete intercourse between the business and the macrocosm. For a business to enjoy long confines success it has to contribute the ability to spring up and adapt with the ever changing trends of the populace in order to commiserate the inevitably and concerns of the general national. Author and entrepreneur Deirdre K. Breakenridge (2008) states in her book PR 2.0 pertly Media, in the altogetherfound Tools, sassy Audiences that Its critical for PR professionals to read, be k this instantledgeable, and stay passing intumesce versed about the markets their brands try to get ahead. The twentieth century brought TV, radio, and the Internet, which greatly impacted the habituate of habitual Relations. But just as these media channels brought impact and change to the utilize of universe dealing then, so leave the grind away of modernistic media in the twen ty-first Century.With the emergence of many new-made online communication tools and channels due to the technological advancements of our time, public dealing practicians can no extended rely solely on handed-down media to channel their messages. Today new media has been recognize as one of the strongest forms of channelling messages across to the public. It is extremely vital that PR practitioners learn, explore, and understand the use of new media and the sub platforms it can play in public dealings runs. This essay leave examine the roles new media play in public dealings campaigns and what the prevalence of new media imply for PR practitioners.Today new media is at the heart of companies public dealings and marketing initiatives. One of the roles of new media in public relations is to build efficacious and useful communication between public relations practitioners, or an organization they represent, and the divergent specific public groups they are exhausting t o reach. Public relations practitioners rely on the tools and channels that new media provide for divers(prenominal) purposes, all of which are part of effective communication and connecting with the public. Some of the purposes take on grammatical construction or maintaining relationships, garnering support and reputation, gaining feedback, delivering certain messages or news program.In this day and age it has pass essential for public relations to subscribe to in continuous communion with the public. As the ways in which deal deal and receive discipline are chop-chop evolving so must the ways in which PR interacts with the public. With new tools that are indeterminate to PR practitioners for communicating like E-mails, websites, digital/online newsletters, web logs, viral marketing, search engines, live gathering calls, RSS and podcasting. (Aronson, Spetner and Ames, 2007, p. 1), new media provides enhanced information talking to systems and granting everyone with e asy access to vehicles of big money communication. Theaker (2008) indicates that Websites are already regarded as a mainstream cistron of corporate communications, and PR practitioners should be mixed when clients set up websites,. The Internet provides the unparalleled opportunity for people of all ages to acquire, digest, and understand a message through images, graphics, video, phone and other visual displays which the traditional media could non put together to effectively communicate. (Macky, 2011, p. 1).In addition to its use for connecting with the target public. New media can also be use in public relations for connecting with media outlets. some trade publications, magazines and bloggers run blogs, chitter accounts and Facebook pages for their news source. Majority of the latest news and heathenish trends are carried on social ne devilrks and micro blogging services like Facebook and Twitter. Fitch (2009) states that blogs energise value as research tools in that they offer an insight to the complexity, subtlety, diversity, and the contradictions and lack of viscidness in public opinion. Public relations practitioners would find that staying connected with the mass public through these channels would effectively maturation their knowledge and understanding of the latest trends and happenings that people are talking about or are heavily influenced by. This particular role plays an important part in the strategies and tactical manoeuvre of how a public relations practitioner would carry out a campaign or defend it in a time of crisis.KFCs 2010 cognition shove campaign was a great good example of how effective new media can be in the practice of a public relations campaign. With 2.5 million college scholarships awarded every socio-economic class in the U.S., KFC immovable it had to cook up something innovative to stir buzz round the brands 75-scholarship Colonels Scholars program. KFC collaborated with Weber-Shandwick to reach out to a younger contemporaries by employing trendy social media strategies. KFC and Weber-Shandwick decided to do away with the tired old college scholarship essay and award students a $20,000 scholarship based solely on a single tweet to win over KFC execs why they deserved a scholarship.The scholarship tweet campaign generated to a greater extent than 1,000 media placements and tens of millions of media impressions, including two AP Wire stories, multiple stories on CNN newspaper headline News, MSNBC, The Weather Channel and NBC national news. The program also captivated the online world, generating more than gild million social media impressions as a result of tweets during the brief entry period. In all, more than 2,800 applicants tweeted for their chance at $20,000, and the KFC Twitter handle saw a 20% jump in followers in just two weeks.But with the rise of new media on the internet, there is now a much greater honorable responsibilities with how PR practitioners handle the use of these tools. soft as well as quantifiable analysis is required because reported drive studies indicate that some organisations and companies are attempting to ensnarl in the what is now termed Web 2.0 social media environment using traditional methods of unidirectional information transmission and a view as paradigm of communication characteristic of mass media (Gregory, 2004, p. 246).For example, some public relations departments and agencies confine created elude blogs such as Wal-Marting crossways America. In the former case, public relations firm Edelman created an organisation called Working Families for Wal-Mart which create a blog in which Jim and Laura allegedly reported their personal adventures driving across America in an RV which happened to include regular visits to Wal-Mart stores. Other bloggers including Wal-Mart Watch and by and by BusinessWeek quickly detected falsity and revealed that the mate were employed by Edelman on behalf of Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart ,Edelman flogged for blog, 2006). Wal-Mart and Edelman Public Relations were severely criticised for the fake blog and creation of the fake organisation, referred to as astro-turfing (Gogoi, 2006).And so with New media, many changes have been introduced to the practice of public relations in multiple ways. Most significantly in the agitate from one-way PR communications to a two or multi-way communications. New media has also affected how PR professionals learn and interact with the traditional media reporter curiously with those who blog. Immediate access to reporter blogs forfeit for tracking of reporter interests and beats and this information leads to a more familiar, personalized dialogue in comparison to the traditional pitch. As more new media tools and techniques emerge, the public relations profession will continue to shift and incorporate the new practices. In the meantime, although new media requires more resources in terms of time, if offers more tools to expand rea ch of messages and programs.ReferencesAronson, M, Spetner, D and Ames, C. (2007). The Public Relations Writers handbook The Digital Age.Breakenridge, D. (2008). PR 2.0 New media, new tools, new audiences.Fitch, K. 2009. New Media and Public Relations in Chia, J. and Synnott, G. An Introduction to Public Relations.Gogoi, P. (2006, October 9). Wal-Marts Jim and Laura The real story. BusinessWeek. Retrieved from http//www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/db20061009_579137.htm?campaign_id=rss_innovateGregory, A. (2004). Scope and anatomical structure of public relations A engineering science driven view. Public Relations Review, 30, 245-254.Macky, M. (2011). embodied Communication & The New MediaTheaker, A. (2008). The public relations handbook. Chapter 20 Using New applied science Effectively in PR