On the way to the Citizen Public Relations

In the 1980-s in the USA the term "citizen journalism" originated  during the election fever journalists tried to reflect issues relevant to voters, not candidates. Later on this term was used to identify the articles written by bloggers. Variety of the social media, their respective popularity among users, who have the opportunity of voicing their opinion, position, satisfaction or resentment, - all these factors contribute to the fact  that now companies seriously paying attention to their image and communication in blogs, microblogs, forums, social networks, photo and video distribution services, as well in various similar channels. Upon conducting a survey of 420 companies, I was able to clarify some interesting trends in the communication of Latvian companies, having target audiences in the social media. (18.10.2010)

Communication diet    

To obtain the most representative data, people, who make decisions concerning the corporate communication were invited to participate in the survey. 44% of the companies surveyed do not communicate in social media, most often the cause being the lack of human resources (36% of the companies that do not conduct communication in social media). Almost a third (28%) believes that it is not effective, 19% admit their lack of knowledge about the possibilities of communication in social media, and 10% as an obstacle named the lack of financial resources.

The remaining 56% of the respondents are communicating in social media on behalf of the company or brand. Besides, most of them are satisfied with this process (78% - rather satisfied, and 1% - are fully satisfied). But let us not too hastily rely on the optimism of the respondents, as most of them have started to communicate in this environment, less than a year ago. Satisfaction, and even a kind of euphoria, I would rather relate to a comparatively short experience of communication, which has not yet managed to lead to serious disappointment, crises, and most importantly - the understanding of long-term effects.

It was also clarified that while the Latvian companies do not follow the principle of integrated communication in social media, mainly focusing just on one channel. "Diet" of the companies in that regard is not as diverse and is more like a strict diet: for example, 8 out of 10 companies that communicate in social media, do not create podcasts, 7 out of 10 - do not lead corporate blogging and have never created entries in Wikipedia, 6 from 10 does not use any image  distribution resources (eg, Flickr), but also do not have a corporate profile on Facebook or draugiem.lv, in turn 5 of 10 companies never communicate in blogs of other users.

The most popular social media among Latvian companies was microblog Twitter.   At least 76% of companies communicate there at least once a week or on a daily basis. For comparison, in the Facebook corporate profile with such regularly communicates only 28%, but in the corporate profile of draugiem.lv - 24%. Various forums and the video distribution resources (Youtube, Vimeo, etc.) are popular wherein almost half of the companies regularly communicates, but not so often - once a month or less.

In this context it is interesting to know what problems the company bring forward by

communicating with their audiences in social media. Most often it is informing the users about current issues within their scope of business or about their product or service. Much of the respondents intended to frequently raise the sale of their products or services, and about half of the companies that communicate in social media, trying to answer questions from users and also speaking with professional journalists. That is, social media had become another channel which the companies include into their media relations armoury.

Less frequently the companies turn to social media to ascertain the views of users about themselves or their competitors, as well as to promote debate in the desired direction. More rarely, they are ready to build a dialogue with users on topics that do not relate to their businesses, as well as communicate with the staff here.

The respondents also were asked about the assessment criteria for their communication success in social media. The majority (67%) prefers to analyse the content of communication, evaluating feedback - the quantity and quality of comments and discussions. Much less frequently such criteria as the scope of audience is mentioned - the number of followers and clicks (17%), changing the company`s reputation (8%), financial performance of the company (3%). In turn, 5% do not assess the results of communication in social media, believing that this is impossible.

An interesting contradiction appeared here: on the one hand, 59% of companies say that they often or very often communicate in social media, in order to sell their product or services, however only 3% of them estimate success of communication by the changes of the financial results. On the one hand is contradictory, but some statistics that explains it. As you can see, the companies mostly choose microblog Twitter for their corporate communication, which has in Latvia slightly more than 30,000 users – comprising about 2% of the total number of Internet users. Having said that, speaking about massive sales in this environment is still preliminary.

In any case, while the potential of this channel is associated with an opportunity to listen to what users say about brands, what trends prevail in public opinion and build a dialogue with the "early adopters" who in this environment are opinion leaders. Admittedly, however, that while the companies underutilise that potential and not so much "listen" in social media - at the time of the survey companies noted that they rarely monitor what do the users say about them or their competitors.

Civilian Public Relations  

The users would gladly interact in social media with ordinary employees, who can share interesting and useful information, but the survey revealed that among the companies, only 4% are ready for this, most often assuming that it is the task of PR-specialists and marketing specialists. Interestingly, the same number of respondents (4%) believed that their communication in social media - is the responsibility of the communication agency.

Here an important point appears - employees that are of interest to the public, thanks to social media can become company spokespersons

and actively participate in the communication. We are facing the phenomenon, which I would name "citizen PR” - thanks to social media the role of each employee in shaping the image of the company is increased.   There are two crucial aspects. On the one hand, an even more serious was the issue of a thought-out internal communication, because only satisfied, informed and loyal employees can positively and sincerely communicate under the umbrella of his/her company. On the other hand, it is essential that the companies formulate their position concerning communication of their employees in social media. Ideally, they should create guidelines or a specific set of rules that clearly define how and what the company communicates in social media, but from what it refrains. In this case, there wouldn’t be correct to prohibit communication in social media, if the employees themselves defined such an initiative, or vice versa - forcing them to communicate here, in case it not part of their  work responsibilities and, moreover, if they are not ready for this.

Admittedly, that even for the communication specialists social media is becoming a real challenge. The process of communication in this area is characterised as a continuous conversation and requires less formal - a short, emotional and expressing the opinion of the specific circle of persons. The issue of the language in which to organise communication in social media still remains unanswered. If on a website one can make a button LV, RUS, ENG, then in Twitter, or Facebook it is more complicated- to duplicate profile information in several languages would be to litter the already overloaded information environment. Therefore for the time being it is necessary to choose the primary language of communication - a problem that, for sure, eventually will be technically solved.

Another challenge relates to the fragmented perceptions, which is typical for users of social media. A user chooses when to connect to the channel, and through various filtering resources may itself select the information it wishes to receive. In social media a continuous flow of information occurs, consisting of short texts, photos, videos and does not imply a serious penetration into each message. Thus, the habits of perception of information are changing, which is proved in research. For example, the company Outsell Inc. held a survey in the U.S., which found that 44% of Google News users just re-read headlines and do not click on them, so as they do not get to the websites of specific news sources. Communication specialists need to learn to communicate in these circumstances under the information noise conditions.

Looking into the future  

It would be premature to suggest that social media have become a substitute for the traditional media, but now it`s time for companies, which are viewing their communication, seriously and with a long-term perspective, to draw attention to this channel of communication. In Latvia, it is still relatively free niche for the corporate communication, where you can collect followers and important items of trust, which is useful when the number of users of social media will grow to a level that would yield more significant benefits for business. However, presently the basic mistakes that companies should avoid when communicating in social media are already clarified: ignoring issues, misleading the audience, the condemnation of staff for communications in social media on topics related to the company, the imposition of "friendship", as well as passion for the information of commercial nature.