“Can social media help convert public relations as mostly publicity to public relations as mostly relationships? Discuss.”This essay will discuss whether social media can help convert public relations from mostly being about gaining/gathering publicity to public relations being mostly about relationships. Who,where, what, when and why? Traditional PR was all about getting the rightmessage, to the right people at the right time via a singular message deliveredvia mass media (press, TV, radio). The current multi-channel, multi-device digitallandscape has changed this so much more flexibility and adaptability isrequired of online communications. There has never been a time of moreopportunity to increase your brand/company awareness online but  customer relations also needs carefulmanagement preferably by a dedicated social media team. It isdebatable whether a company or the general public (consumers) have more powerand influence over its image. On the one hand it can be argued that theconsumer has more power and influence for example Pret opened a pop-up veganrestaurant which was influenced by the large (growing) vegan food movement (inthe general public) and Pret then changed the menu to more vegan-friendlyofferings, also Starbucks was influenced by consumer opinions/views to moveaway from basic coffee offerings to more artisan coffee offerings. Michael Korswas also influenced by consumer opinions/views to move away from offering basichandbags. Irn Bru’s recipe change (they are reducing sugar content followinggovernment guidelines) is causing large upset amongst customers. Brandreputation is (to a certain extent) important in influencing consumer opinionand behaviour so it is important to cultivate/nurture customer relationshipsonline. Unethical companies will get fined and shamed for example Canada Geeseand Starbucks. Luxury brands such as Rolex watches are seen as a status symboland are aspirational lifestyle items. Celebrities influence people to makechoices/decisions online (so good PR would be to attract relationships withcelebrities and other influencers). If things go wrong online then the brand reputationis somewhat destroyed but big companies such as Amazon do have large resilienceto PR mistakes. Lush is a handmade cosmetics company which is vegan and nottested on animals which has become massive now as a movement. Cars such asJaguar, Porsche and Ferrari are iconic and a massive status symbol for peopleto own. Interestingly, Body Shop have been brought by L’Oreal (seen asunethical by some) and Innocent Smoothies have been brought by Coca Cola (thelargest soft drinks manufacturer in the world- and in some ways a long way fromthe small-time ethical community-minded spirit of Innocent!). Millennial’s caregreatly about ethics. Although celebrities are good to project your PR messageonline and promote your company there are recent examples of massive misfiresby companies online. For example, there was a huge backlash over Kylie Jenner’sBlack Lives Matter Pepsi ad and also over the racism from H&M when a whitechild wore a “King of the Jungle/Survival Expert” jumper and theblack child wore a “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle” jumper.Social media influencers/bloggers are influential over time and this requires time and effort in terms of electronic PR. Pew De Pie (YouTuber) lost sponsorship over ill-advised anti-Semitic comments and child pornography comments. Blockbuster video did not change with the times rapidly enough and Netflix came in and now it is no longer in business. Brewdog (craft beer maker) has become really large and obsessed by KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and it does outrageous things and over the top things just for publicity and attention. At Redbull and Brewdog you will not be hired if you turn up to an interview for example which is unnecessary in my opinion, but may be seen as trendy by some others. TripAdvisor has a big influence over a companies’ image because customer ratings and reviews easily enhance or harm a companies’ image.  A local example is a garden centre in Inverurie started selling animal furs and there were massive protests and also there were boycotts threatened when Irn Bru announced it was changing its recipe (because people are anti-sweetener). Also- Irn Bru is now made/brewed in England in Milton Keynes but is most commonly associated (and mostly available) in Scotland. On balance then, companies have more power and influence over their image because they have the means (time, money, manpower) to manipulate their image to the outside world. A word of caution is perhaps we are in some ways too gullible because there are stories of Chinese and Indian bots making fake reviews and ratings on TripAdviser so maybe do not trust everything you see online so online PR should be about creating valid/real messages online so that the company/organisation can be seen as trustworthy, dependable and reliable. Grunig,J.E. & Chun-ju Flora Hung-Baesecke (2015, p71) believe that relationshipscannot be qualified a value in purely monetary terms (like in the past withtraditional PR) as it is indefinable and indescribable as it is more of afeeling (opinions and views) nowadays. (2015,P76) they conclude that areputation is composed of a combination of the entire amount of the knowledgeand views and opinions of every influential body. (2015, p78) Reputations areflexible and adaptable to changing circumstances and situations socially,publically, economically and politically. (2015, p92) It is far from clear-cutabout company perceptions and the results are mixed and show that even with agood reputation a company can be recollected for bad things and vice versa soonline PR must be carefully planned and organised for valuable results. (2015,p105) “. The more energetic and active you are about talking and speakingabout a company the more inclined you are to have brain representations of thecompany, to recollect positive and negative actions and to state fulfilment andmaybe disappointment with services and items. The less energetic and active youare about talking and speaking about a company the more regularly you willthink of shallow and obvious brain representations of the company such asexplanatory elements, internal and external staff, or other items/thingsconnected to the company. Gruingand Baesecke (2015, p107) come up with a number ofresults/recommendations/suggestions which are: PR staff who are concerned withdefending or increasing in a positive way the status/standing, and theassociations, of the companies they are in they should achieve this by activelyengaging in the planned organised procedures of the company so that they canhave a possible authority on the company actions selected by the people incharge. The conventional method of stating predetermined statements afteractions are taken would have a marginal consequence on both standing/status orassociations. In evaluation and reflection this author recommends that PR staffshould centre their attention on associations as a gauge of equally theimportance and significance and accomplishment of their efforts. The authorsstudy’s conclusions also recommend that PR actions have an increased academicand experimental relationship to associations than to standing/status, and thatassociations ought to be the centre of attention of assessment studies in PR. T.Kelleher(2015, p281) examines the role of PR in the current digital landscape of theexplosion of Social Media usage. In the past they were concerned withmass-perception and views and opinions and communicating a standardised messageto a wide varied and diverse population. Nowadays, social media has shifted thefocus to more individualised and personalised communication.  And thus PR has changed its focus also.(P283-p286)- to answer this essay question I must first examine what is meantby the term Social Media. There is considerable scholarly debate better howbest to define this term but mostly scholars agree there is a distinct anddefinite difference between  Social Mediaand the days of old mass communication. P288- The increasing sophisticationand progress in tools and techniques have reduced expenditure for storing andpreparing items of use and making the account/record of person-to-persondiscussions and business deals easier to find by web search engines. P290-Social media has made the wide expanse of the globe smaller by breaking downbarriers to communication and making communication between far off placeseasier and with a greater sense of closeness. (2015, p296-297) .” Putcustomers first when thinking about a PR strategy and you will be rewarded withconsumer conviction, confidence, approval, agreement, dedication/loyalty, andorganisational help and support as related results.  P297- Social media usage is a double-edgedsword and  must be carefully managed andcontrolled to get your company or organisation your desired outcome as it iseasy to damage reputations online and in the current mass-use landscape ofsocial media this can have a massive affect for your company. P298- There arepros and cons to Social media usage in PR but it is vital/essential to changewith the times and also we need to think internally and externally when usingsocial media for PR activities. Solis andBreakenridge (2009, p37) concur and agree that companies need to be on SocialMedia- PR cannot survive if it doesn’t have the faith of those who believe andauthorize us with the trademark/brand name of the organisation we stand for. PRis changing, and to continue on we have much intelligence gathering and payingattention to do. Interaction/associations should still be at the heart/core ofPR. P201- Ignore social media as a company/organisation at your peril – diveright in and get involved- be where the people are! D.L Wilcox and G.T. Cameron(2014) also agree that PR needs to change and adapt but stay true to goodethical behaviour. I.Nee andC.Burmann (2016) in their study of hotel reviews and ratings say that (p195-)Companies/organsations increasingly realise the importance of responding to andcontrolling/mitigating online ratings and reviews by way of a professional,polite and well-considered constructive response to negative criticism. This isespecially important as people nowadays have a wide variety and diversity ofplaces to vent their good and bad feedback and if you are a small business andunprofessional response can be truly damaging to your custom and takings. Thisis also supported by A.Charlesworth (2014, p323) who argues that integrated online communications are making companies much morepublically transparent and open to ratings and reviews. In my opinion I believethis is a good thing because this means companies/organisations can now be heldresponsible for their actions in a direct easier way and then they can develop,improve and grow with time based on real-time data from the customers usingtheir services, buying their products- this is why it is essential for publicrelations to move online and use Social Media. Views andopinions online have never been so prolific and significant and powerful    and there is even a new area of studyspecifically to look at this online (see F.A.POZZI et al., 2016 for moredetail) . Sentiment analysis (which is theprocess of electronically recognising and classifying views articulated in aportion/section of passage/wording, predominantly/principally in order to establishwhether the writer’s position towards a particular subject, theme, item forconsumption, etc. is affirmative, pessimistic, or nonaligned) is an emergingfield of study and is especially important currently where there have neverbeen more opportunities to engage via social media and on a variety ofplatforms such as YouTube or Twitter using a variety of multimedia tools suchas images or video. R.Deiss, R and R.Henneberry (2017, p174) also agree that social media must be constantly andconsistently monitored and reviewed for any views and opinions so e-PR requireslots of time and effort and not just one big outlay of expenditure like was thecase with traditional PR.  A.Charlesworth (2015, P210) reminds us that also it is important tohave a pre-planned and organised disaster strategy in place to help navigatethe murky waters of the online world. Social media has increased the importanceof having a good emergency procedure to deal with negative events which canquickly diminish a company or organisation’s repute/character. D.Chaffey andP.R.Smith (2017) agree with this on p413 they say it has never been easier todamage your company or organisations reputation through a bad relationship withcustomer’s online. It is debatable whether the impact of bad relationships onlineare long-term or short-term but this probably depends on the size of thecompany as to whether reputations can weather storms of bad publicity. D.Chaffeyand F-Ellis-Chadwick (2016; from pages 502-507) have a number of things to sayabout e-PR and traditional PR such as the strengths and weaknesses of E-PR andhow best to prepare and control E-PR (which is much harder to do than with masstraditional PR with its short-term campaigns and projects). C.Dempster (2015,p14) also agrees that their needs to be a shift in how PR is controlled andprepared compared to past practices; PR planningand organisation now has to happen in a much more reactive way now compared totraditional more controlled passive way. D.Ryan (2017) has some interesting and thought-provoking ways (methods,tools and techniques) to engage (via online content) with the currentgeneration of online users in this multi-channel, multi-device digitallandscape- remember that content must inform, educate or entertain.  There are a numberof considerations when writing for Public Relations and this can equallyapplied to writing for Social Media (though remember Social Media is a muchmore casual channel for more informal discussions and debates)- see studies byJ.Foster (2012) or D.L.Wilcox (2014) for further details. Nicholas (nofirst name given, 2015) compares and contrasts social media marketing andpublic relations. Marketing for social mediarequires a mixture of both PR and marketing. To be successful on social mediayou need to know how to balance customer relationships and liaison withmaking/generating brilliant engaging, creative media pieces, curate fascinatingevents and normally just connect with your customers/public. The maindifference between PR and social marketing is your audience on social media isdiverse and large whereas in traditional PR your audience was mainly selectinternal and external people who were important movers and shakers fornetworking and monetary reasons. This means social media is a slow-burner whenit comes to relationship building and it will require more time and effort thantraditional PR to make a big force change. .” People on social media do not require a company to have acertain position/perspective or a catch/attraction or the hard sell forcompanies products or services. People on social media would like is for thecompany online to have a clear, consistent message and a clear tone of voice.If company’s do change perspectives on social media posts then there is now abacklash and people are getting annoyed/irritated at the changeability and willlikely see your company as fake and will go elsewhere. Social media marketingis much more active and interactive then traditional PR where messages areconsidered mainly in a reactive way. PR has peaks and troughs connected to keyevents and campaigns whereas social media requires concerted and sustainedeffort and time on a continuous basis to grow and preserve and you will loselikes/followers/subscribers if you turn social media content on and off. Inconclusion, there will always be a need for public relations to be aboutselling the products and services of a company; but, for longevity, this needsto be mixed with cultivating meaningful customer relations (online via socialmedia for example). This is supported by P.J. Kitchen, P.J and E.Uzunoglu (2015) in their book; p17- Thesolution to the challenges of the modern-era communications era is in theseauthors opinion an  integratedcommunications solution combining digital media (Social Media etc…) andtraditional media (press, TV, radio etc…) this view is supported by M.Stelzner (2014) who says that to buildrelationships you need a combination of offline and online techniques.  ReferencesChaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2016). Digital Marketing. Pearsons. CHAFFEY, D. and SMITH, P.R., 2017. DigitalMarketing Excellence: Planning , Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing. 5thed ed. London; New York: Routledge. CharlesworthA., 2014. Digital marketing: a practical approach, Hoboken: Taylorand Francis. Available at: http://rgu.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1753244CHARLESWORTH, A., 2015. An introduction tosocial media marketing. First Edition ed. New York: Routledge, Taylor &Francis Group. Deiss, R and R, Henneberry; 2017 DigitalMarketing For Dummies. 10th Edition, John Wiley & Sons. Dempster, Craig(2015). The rise of the platform marketer: performance marketing withGoogle, Facebook, and Twitter, plus the latest high-growth digital advertisingplatforms. Wiley. FOSTER, J., 2012. Writing skills for publicrelations: style and technique for mainstream and social media. 5th ed ed.London: Kogan Page. Grunig, J.E. & Chun-ju Flora Hung-Baesecke The Effect of Relationships on Reputationand Reputation on Relationships. A Cognitive, Behavioral Study In: Eyun-Jung Ki(Editor)  Public Relations AsRelationship Management: A Relational Approach To the Study and Practice ofPublic Relations, 2nd edition, Routledge 2015, p. 63-113. Kelleher, T, 2015.  Everybody’sJob? Managing Public Relations in the Age of Social Media In: Eyun-Jung Ki (Editor) Public RelationsAs Relationship Management: A Relational Approach To the Study and Practice ofPublic Relations, 2nd edition, Routledge 2015, p. 281-305.Kitchen, P.J andUzunoglu, E Integrated communications in the postmodern era. 2015. Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. NEE, I. and BURMANN, C., 2016. Managing negative word-of-mouth on social media platforms: the effect of hotel management responses on observers’ purchase intention. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. NICHOLAS, (no first name given) 2015. Everwall Blog Social marketing versus public relations: What’s the difference, really?. [online] Available from: https://everwall.com/blog/social-marketing-versus-public-relations-whats-the-difference-really/ [Accessed 01/02/18 2018] POZZI, F.A. et al., 2016. Sentiment analysis in social networks. San Francisco: Elsevier Science. RYAN, D , 2017. Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. 4th edition, KoganPage. SOLIS, B. and BREAKENRIDGE, D., 2009. Putting the public back in public relations: how social media is reinventing the aging business of PR. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: FT Press. STELZNER, M., 2014. Relationship marketing: How to build meaningful connections that lead to business. [online] Available from: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/relationship-marketing-with-ted-rubin/ [Accessed 01/02/18 2018] WILCOX, D.L., 2014. Public relations: writing and media techniques. Seventh edition ed. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited. WILCOX, D.L. and CAMERON, G.T., 2014. Public relations: strategies and tactics. Tenth edition, Pearson new international edition ed. Harlow, Essex: Pearson.Get Help With Your EssayIf you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!Find out more