Sunday, October 17, 2010

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.









Sunday, October 10, 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?