Question Five

What kind of conversational patterns can you expect to encounter using social media as a PR professional? What will consumers of your content expect? How can you level these expectations?



Social media has changed the entire way in which we communicate. With the development of applications such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc. we are able to communicate quicker to a wider audience. It also has eliminated the need for long winded conversations and forces us to get to down to the ‘nitty gritty’ details that are most important. Twitter for example only allows for 140 characters, so you must make sure that what you say is direct and to the point.

Social media was also designed to create a new venue for conversation. It allows you to have a conversation about anything, (health care reforms to who won Canadian Idol) without leaving the comforts of your home. I also think that social media allows individuals to voice their ‘true’ opinions without any fear of being social scorned. Social media is also a little more impersonal than face-to-face communication so can create a more subjective platform for conversation.

With the development of social media consumer expectations of PR professionals is a lot higher. They expect consistency in messages. If you write something one day, don’t contradict yourself the next because social media is a double edged sword and once it is on the internet, it is always there. There is no way of going back and changing something and people can always search for your comments and use them against you. Clarify all your statements, make sure they are simple, straight forward and easy to understand. And last, but not least, repeat, repeat, repeat. Often times consumers are distracted with other things going on in their lives and so might miss part of the message being communicated. If you repeat your message three things can happen: a) those consumers will hear the entire message, b) consumers or potential consumers will hear the message for the first time, thus you increase your cliental, and c) it ingrains the messages your promoting in your consumers mind. After all, humanity has a very short attention span, so if you want the consumers attention, be honest, be specific, be concise and REPEAT!

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