Based on (Holton, 2009), social media present challenges, not the least because they break traditional categories of audience’s employees, customers, shareholders. The public and worldwide nature of social media means all audiences can read communications proposed for any one viewer. One can no longer classify audiences and messages. Matrices of targets and themes have become a blob with indeterminate relations and gaps.
However, to make the challenges more difficult, practitioners cannot assume importance in any one social medium will reach everyone. Social media are so patchy that an individual may or may not see information in a blog, on a Face book page or in a Tweet. Consequently a practitioner is challenged with getting the mass of an audience via media that a majority hypothetically can entrée but in reality might not view. In one way, this is no different than distribution of information in traditional media such as newspapers. Just because a story is in a newspaper doesn’t mean everyone in a planned audience has read it or even seen it. However, since there are less traditional media, the possibility any one individual has seen a story in a newspaper is higher precisely than considering the same story in one of a million blogs.
Yet, there’s still a challenges need to be considered:
Although the challenges may seem difficult for PR practitioners, there are rewards for penetrating social media successfully. You can reach these self-identified audiences with a laser-like focus to communicate client messages successfully and professionally. Successful bloggers, had build audiences of like minds and interests. The misuse that attends so much of media is largely eliminated if one is able to hit into groups that have a self-identified interest in the topics and messages you throw. There is as well a viral part to reaching the right group. They mix your messages on their own without your prompting thereby achievement a much superior audience than mainly planned for.
But, what are social media?
According to (Grunig, 1984), social media defined as user generated and published information. However, users often republish information they have discovered elsewhere, so user generation is loosely defined. Besides that, social media also considered as multimedia tools such as blogs, podcasts, video, photos, forums, internet messaging, and texting. The internet subsumes all audiovisual and print media because it can convey them cited by (McQuail, 1994). Social media, by extension makes use of all media forms. There is even a growing possibility of broad communication.
In a broader viewpoint, there is little difference between traditional media relations and social media relations. In traditional media relations, practitioners recognize reporters and editors and build relationships with them in order to get client news distributed. In social media, practitioners recognize important participants and build relationships with them in order to get client news disseminated. It is more difficult in social media because there are more participants and there is less clearness in shaping who are the audiences. If the past is a guide, over time influentials will unite within social media, and practitioners will have a clearer viewpoint on where to go. That is happening, but there are still large areas of social media open to examine.
References: Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing public relations. New York: NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
McQuail, D. (1994). Mass communication theory. London: Sage.
James L.Holton (20019). Public Relations And Social Media
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/09/the-future-of-social-networks-communication/
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