A Deeper Look Into Twitter

Everyday millions of people are using social media to create, discover, and share their ideas across multiple networks. Living in a digital age PR professionals are turning to Twitter as an effective tool in facilitating communication and essentially creating and maintaining business-customer relations.

Twitter is not only accessible and efficient for new users; it also keeps businesses up-to-date and aware. Twitter may be the most useful tool in the social media world right now and as tomorrow’s PR professionals I urge anyone and everyone to join if they’re not tweeting already.

New users of Twitter are benefiting everywhere from its user-friendly network because of the accessibility and efficiency it offers any professional. Social media sites like Facebook require friend requests that sometimes take time for approval or in worst case completely are declined. Well Twitter connects people right now. With the opportunity of following others and vice versa publicly, immediate connections can be made between businesses and customers.

 When searching for networks of interest Twitter is built on a keyword search engine. Individuals can just type in a word and it will pull up multiple feeds with that word and essentially allowing the professional to target specific markets of interest

Now twitter isn’t all about useful immediacy. The nature of this network lets you build relationships with customers, partners and other important people that are useful to a PR professional. Twitter gives customers the opportunity to have direct communication with a professional. Shrinking the emotional gap between a business and its customers is something all companies strive to achieve.

 With the opportunity to communicate casually with customers and take consideration to their questions, experiences, and needs can only increase your chances of business prosperity. PR professionals are finding that with such engagement and interaction, the feedback can only be of use for future planning. It’s about listening, evaluating and then accommodating the needs of your customer based on decoding commentary.

Now with Twitter providing all the tools needed to maintain these relationships it is important as a professional to stay aware and up-to-date of any matters that may affect a business or industry. Twitter gives you as a professional the resources to stay ahead and informed about competition. Having the ability to use these search engines and see what people are saying about other companies or current trends can be a valuable tool to any professional.

With Twitter’s messages that are quick to write, easy to read, controlled by the generator and exchangeable anywhere you have a powerful tool when creating and maintaining relationships. Not only does Twitter have the capacity to build your client base it can keep a PR professional up-to- date and aware in an ever-changing business world. Joining Twitter is critical in the success of any PR professional, so get out there and start tweeting.

To Blog or Not to Blog

The use of social media in a PR professional’s world is becoming more of a necessity than just a useful tool. There are no longer limits to communication within the business world. Social sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are helping professionals create and maintain positive relationships with their publics. The digital age has allowed for much advancement in interacting with a company and its customers.

Any PR professional must first define the focus of the company. By having a centralized goal, a professional may be able to determine the best use of social media for the specific situation. Using tools such as blogging may allow for questions and answers among a business and their clients.

Blogging allows a professional to tap into certain niche markets and help expand through conversation. By answering questions and evaluating other blogs and comments, allow for feedback in a company. This in turn helps spread a message among these markets and their users. Not only are others witnessing the initiative a company is making but they are redefining the company to fit these customers needs.

With the use of company blogs are PR professionals becoming more expendable? Businesses have been given the tools to create and maintain these relationships on their own. Media skills and training are becoming more evident with upper-level management today. Public relations might not have deceased but the professional may no longer be as coveted as he once was.

I believe that for the future it is important for PR professionals to be up to date on all that is social media. Through understanding the media we are better able to predict outcomes. Blogging for example, may be one of the most important means of interaction among companies and their clients right now. By understanding all aspects of social media and the potential that each market has will be the difference between the professionals and those who are just media savvy.

A PR Professional's Dream

Everyone is always looking for the next “big thing” to hit the social media market. With social media constantly enhancing methods of communication or creating new ones at that matter, it can be hard to keep up with the continuous advancement. What if there was a platform that pulled all these online activities into one location?

Involver developed and released their new social media platform back in July that has the ability to do just that. The dashboard product itself can bring social media networks like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook together into one centralized location. Users can publish posts, monitor conversations, handle scheduling and create and manage an entire brand strategy over all social mediums.

The company itself has relied heavily on the 100,000+ customers that they have already gained in the past few months.  With all the excitement and rapid growth in the company many investors have decided to grab the opportunity. Bessemer Venture Partners has invested $8 million in funding for the new platform.

“While Involver is profitable today, receiving outside capital is an important and strategic move for any company growing as rapidly as we are,” said Rahim Fazal, co-founder and CEO of Involver. “This new round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, will provide our company with additional opportunities to enhance the value our future and existing customers find in the Involver Platform.” 

Their Audience Management Platform, AMP, allows organizations to create these new strategic networks all under one umbrella. One important matter is that users may be able to access this or respond to the same activity from one location too.

I believe we will see many new creations or versions of this Involver Dashboard in the future. Having the ability to become more time efficient for businesses and monitor all these different outlets under one roof can only improve and change the professional world as a whole.

In the world of public relations this product can only improve efficiency in its greatest attempt to keep up with the new media. By allowing the engagements of users and professionals can only increase interaction among a public relation professional and his client. With the opportunity to use all the different applications involving polls, coupons, sweepstakes, etc. it is a PR professionals dream.

With the ever changing social media world, products such as this can only help public relation professionals in keeping up with numerous portals of activity. Having the advantage of being able to search key words or brand mention over multiple threads is phenomenal. I think this might be the best thing we have so far in dominating the world of public relations. Anyone that cannot keep up with the constant advancements will only set themselves up to fail.

http://www.involver.com/press-releases/oct-14-2010/

New World of Public Relations

Over the last couple years public relations has seen a major transition on the process of its operation in accordance to social media. Many of those involved within the social media world have made assumptions that public relations is deteriorating and on a path to complete nonexistence.

I believe the world of public relations is and never will completely cease to exist. It is a world of ever changing methods and as social media continues to grow it will allow public relations to evolve and adapt to media settings. It will allow public relations to become more effective and efficient in the way we present our messages and or have them travel over multiple networks at one time.

We have entered a realm where once no one could review products and or other media opportunities but now have that option through video networking like YouTube.  Opinions and commentary can now be seen instantly on sites such as Twitter. Social media has allowed companies to gain a better understanding of what and how things can be done based on the feedback of these sites from consumers.

In today’s society, there is a still a huge market for the world of public relations. The world of public relations isn’t necessarily changing but the mediums through which we conduct these messages are. The companies who will reap the benefits of this ever changing media world are those who have already started making changes and adapting to these social media settings.

Over the next couple years we might notice the extinction of the traditional public relations industry. Public relations is about keeping up with the ever changing media and social networking is the new basis for its existence. Those companies who decide to join the masses and leave their more conservative methods at the door are those who will thrive in this generation of social media and networking.

Not everyone necessarily likes their own industry changing but those who adapt will be the businesses that we still see in production 10 years from now. Companies that see this as a positive rather than a negative are the ones who will continue to prosper. If a greater understanding of social media is gained and better business- consumer relationships are maintained, how could the world of public relations possibly die out?