Research For Social Media Use in PR

For my blog I am focusing on the use of social media as a tool for public relations practicioners. In its original plan of use, social media was meant to connect people to each other through the use of the internet. It was simply a new means to communication. Over the years, more and more social media outlets have been created, and with these evolving outlets new uses for social media have come to exist. Advertising, for example, has been affected by the social media outburst. Websites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter have boosted the space and outreach of advertising. Being that social media attracts such vast audiences, I’ve even heard of grandparents using Facebook, it allows companies to reach larger, more diverse  audiences. It has become a part of our everyday lives that brings a sense of unity because we are for the most part interested in using our social media outlets. In the public relations world, social media is a fairly new tool.

I am personally interested in the use of social media for public relations purposes because of my history with social media. In an internship completed during this past summer (Summer 2010), I became a Social Media Manager for an entertainment news website. The website of course already had existing social media accounts, but there was no one person to focus on establishing the company’s brand in the social media world. While working on establishing a social media department for the website, I had to figure out how to connect what the website stands for to what the people in the social media world want to be exposed to and indulge in. The initial purpose of using social media was to increase the number of visits to the site. Over time our goals changed and grew regarding what the expectations were of social media use. I can securely say I left the website at the end of my internship with an established social media department, however, I did not have the full capacity knowledge of research to leave them with more proof and numbers as to the success of the uses I implemented for them.

Therefore, given my recent experience with social media, I am interested in exploring how to do adequate research regarding its use in public relations, while I gain valuable knowledge in research throughout the duration of this course. I would like to be able to know that if I went back to the website I interned for, I would know exactly how to research and evaluate the program I created to how things are done now and the results of it all.