Social media provides new avenues for PR professionals to pursue organizational goals such as creating interested prospects, providing quick updates, and allowing customers to promote businesses. PR goals can be met through social media campaigns that engage customers, build relationships, target demographics, and communicate with internal and external groups. Professionals must monitor and respond to publics, follow best practices, and quantify returns through metrics.

1. The impact of Social Media on Public Relations:
New communication mediums for internal and external publics
The use of social media is immediately tied to PR goals
i. Moving the traditional definition of WOM forward giving avenues for controlled word of mouth, immediate reach
with messages, targeted subjects, etc.
ii. Two‐way communication
iii. Instant reach to publics and specific target demographics
iv. Reaching both internal and external publics
PR Goal #1 – creating a community of interested prospects with an economic goal
Example 1: Alicia Keys (creative marketing director) and Blackberry Twitter
1. Over 11 million followers at start of campaign – today over 13 million and over 3,000 tweets
2. Fans learn about Blackberry and apps specific to the phone that emphasize music and video content – Receive
pictures, videos
3. Fans and friends engage in conversation and spread message about BlackBerry 10
4. Reaching very specific target audience and demographic with instant access
5. Controlled word of mouth from a credible source
6. Getting access to potentially new customers, using a celebrity to reach an audience that has a target
demographic, spokeswoman that people listen and value her opinion and generate word of mouth –
7. Campaign has proven successful in sales
Example 2: McDonalds Lunch Break
• Company partnered with Facebook to quantify ROI ‐ saw an increase in sales and guest counts after its social
media campaign and encouraged people to take their lunch hour back and enjoy it at McDonald’s. The
campaign’s return was up to four times the company’s initial investment.
PR Goal #2 – Provide quick updates to a specific group
Example 1: Boston Marathon Suspects (internal & external publics) – Boston Police & FBI using twitter instant
communication with media sources
• Constantly “tweeted” the news media as they had new developments in the hunt for the suspects. Journalists
reporting on CNN, Fox News often said, "we just got a tweet from..." And, law enforcement credited the public for
helping to identify the two suspects through all their cell phone photos, text messages and tweets that they sent to
officials.
• A community effort via social media to find the suspects
Example 2: Arab Spring (Egypt and Arab countries) – sparked and accelerated by twitter and Facebook
PR Goal #3 – give satisfied customers and fans a way to promote your business
Example 1: Lay’s Potato Chips: Do Us A Flavor
• Two‐way – provides venue for discussion and interaction
• Lay’s Facebook site has over 6 million likes, over 140,000 PTAT’s
• Twitter – over 1,00 tweets and 33,000 followers (as of Wednesday)
• First encouraged fans to submit ideas for new potato chips flavors and received about 3.8 million submissions. The
company then whittled down the suggestions to 20 flavors, and a panel picked the final three.
• Success in UK, India and other countries. First time in US

2. PR Goal #4 – Be seen as an expert and be a source of important information
Example 1: Whole Foods – 6 years using social media. Claim social media strategies has made impact on their growth
• Over 1500 employees manage a network of 600 pages ‐ divided by regions and specialties
• Social media strategy is built around the company web site and 6 additional social platforms, including
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, their blog, and recent additions of Foursquare and Pinterest.
• Various departments are involved including customer service (manage twitter), marketing and public
relations
• promote more of their product information, health, recipes, and cooking tip content … engaging as well as
educating
The Social Media Campaign
Using social media should be combined with your campaign goals or over‐all communication strategy. Social media
goals can focus on:
• engaging customers and keeping customers
• building relationships
• bringing in new customers of specific demographics
• communicating with specific publics – internal/external through use of groups and other resources
• should always involve monitoring and responding to your publics
• follow etiquette rules (now in the making)
• find ways to quantify your return on investment – specific strategies to research the impact of your campaign
o challenge of today
o Facebook insights
o McDonalds lunch campaign
o Example: Yahoo measures by how many people click on yahoo articles, which is how they profit.
A Like/Fan will click on an article approximately 7 times a month
RECAP
o Social media is expanding the reach of the PR practitioners job
o expanding PR jobs into various fields – customer service, multi‐media/internet companies
o opening new avenues of research
o new communication mediums
YOU will be the ones moving this new industry forward
Has a long way to grow
QUESTIONS…