PRS201 Practising Public Relations-Variety of Social Media Tools
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Explain the Creative Arts and Industries graduates are expected to have a high standard of communication skills. This unit will place a premium on the quality of the oral presentation. In particular, research/Analysis including conceptual understanding and evidence of wide reading. Students should hand in a bibliography or research list with their presentations. Assessment criteria: The presentation needs to address the task as listed above and discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of social media as a public relations tool.
Evidence of Understanding of Social Media and PR Presentation/Clarity of Information Creativity and Originality What we are looking for is a case study - so a particular issue or concern that a company used social media to address. For example, the Ice Bucket Challenge was a social media based campaign to raise awareness for the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Social media worked so well because of its viral nature and the concept of challenging someone to participate and film it, it was fun, easy to participate in and "shareable". It is about planned communication to establish a relationship to influence opinion or behaviour. A good example is the many health awareness campaigns targeting young people - WHY.
Answer:
The main focus of public relations field in today’s world is to building awareness, changing public attitudes and perceptions towards a social issue, announce new offerings and manage reputation of a company Social media has dramatically influence the PR industry as it has evolved the way information is shared and people are motivated to join any campaign (Lee et al. 2015).The main advantage of social media on PR is that: It has reduced the boundary between the public and a brand It has shortened the time to needed to present a story or idea to a public Social media is an engaging tool to create awareness and study public response to any campaign (Jin, Liu and Austin 2014).
PR professionals can now use variety of social media tools for their advantage. PR professional can use the following tools: Facebook: Allow PR practitioner to engage with audience through high quality content, infographics, images and videos Twitter: It is useful for making announcements to the public or keeping public updated about a crisis Instagram: PR professionals can easily use them to create awareness about issues or cause LinkIn: It can be used to connect with new clients or dissmeninated content to target audience (Patel 2017).
Stoptober was a latest PR activitiy by the Public Health Engalnd which continued for 28 days to stop smoking. This campaign has played a role in encouraging 1 million quit attempts and 28 days campaign was specifically taken because a research showed that avoiding smoking for 28 days is likelt to increase the chance of remaining smoke free (Stoptober 2017)
Stoptober offered range of solutions to help people quit smoking by offering full support on emails, app and Facebook Messenger Facebooks was a major tool used by the Stoptober online community to encourage people to quit smoking It also used many infographics to educate to the public what does it means to quit smoking and the health benefits associated with it (Harvey 2017).
The advantage of using social media in the Stoptober campaign was that: Stoptober became the biggest mass attempt to quit smoking It triggered over 1 million attempts to quit smoking This was possible through the development of mobile phone apps to provide quitting tips It also encouraged participants to strike a pose and post photos throughout the challenge (Harvey 2017).
The use of mobile apps and Facebook encouraged massive participation as people got inspired by checking success stories of participants and update on social media The campaign was successful in making people adhere to quitting by giving notifications regarding financial benefits or many other benefits It helped 1,60, 000 people to quit smoking with Stoptober
References
Brown, J., Kotz, D., Michie, S., Stapleton, J., Walmsley, M. and West, R., 2014. How effective and cost-effective was the national mass media smoking cessation campaign ‘Stoptober’?. Drug and alcohol dependence, 135, pp.52-58. Harvey, A. (2017). LOOK: Why You Should Stop Smoking. [online] HuffPost UK.Jin, Y., Liu, B.F. and Austin, L.L., 2014. Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses. Communication research, 41(1), pp.74-94. Lee, N., Sha, B.L., Dozier, D. and Sargent, P., 2015.
The role of new public relations practitioners as social media experts. Public Relations Review, 41(3), pp.411-413. Patel, T. 2017. The Role and Influence of Social Media on the Modern PR Industry.
