A lot of people are talking about this topic, and one person in particular that I’ve had quite a few conversations with about social media is Desiree Banugo. She works as a Marketing Communications consultant and specializes in social media and internet marketing. She has a really interesting point of view that I’d like to share with you all in the form of a formal Q&A.
Q: In your opinion, is all the hype around new media justified? 
A: Absolutely! However in some markets it will seem more like hype ie business 2 business sector and in others, new media has totally revolutionised their industries such as adult entertainment, music, TV, advertising, newspapers and general retail.
Q: What do you think makes new media a successful (or unsuccessful) method of communication?
A:
- Constantly evolving – it keeps up and at times leads business into new frontiers of communication technologies and challenges the status quo
- Accessibility – widens the reach to a global platform for all messages to mass and even niche markets
- Immediacy – the time required to publish or acquire information is almost instant compared to the print media which is a minimum of next day.
- Communication real estate – low cost of new media supports the inclusion of text, rich media and other formats which would be incredibly expensive in traditional media
- Democratising – levels the playing field for solopreneurs and small businesses with no to low budgets to reach their prospective consumers
- Information wealth - audiences can search and view multiple viewpoints on any subject or issue and thereby also contribute to the conversation
- The customer is truly king – the brand management team also includes the customer – they build (and can also kill) a brand. This may also facilitate a company’s R & D efforts to beat it’s competitors
- Tone of voice – new media doesn’t exclude by geography, dialect, accent, language, class or political affinity unlike some other mediums like newspapers. It’s very conversational in its nature and publishers target their audiences primarily by interest.
Versus
- Lack of control of messages once it reaches the public domain
- Time and physical effort to continually feed the social media marketing machine
- Fast evolution leaves users eating the dust trying to catch up and the investment (time and money) required to upgrade knowledge banks and resources to do so
- Slow adoption of new media techniques in the mainstream may cause disputes in the industry resulting in glitches in growth cycle of a business.
Q: Does PR 2.0 have a place in non-consumer sectors?
A: Yes it does. As trade journal circulations numbers dwindle, many editors and journalists will become bloggers and form/join blogger networks according to particular interests. Traditional press releases and press campaigns cannot be transposed for the digital media space and will have to be adapted. I think as this is quite a new-ish area for PR, (they are about 10 years behind traditional marketing), there will be many trials and errors before adopting an acceptable best practice across the industry.
Q: Are there any areas of web 2.0 that you think PRs are overlooking? Are there any that are already over saturated or over hyped?
A: PRs should be paying close attention to the social media which is tailored toward their interests. Social media also broaches that overlap that PR has with marketing, and that’s purely until more businesses get with using social media for b2b purposes.
In general, PRs should be using a blog as their central social media. It’s the one site that they can control and position as the authoritative voice, opinion and viewpoint of their client.
Secondly, PRs must use the top general social media to raise the profile of the clients:
But before all of this, PRs need to clarify what they need to achieve using social media and craft their activities with that purpose in mind.
I don’t think that any are over saturated or over hyped because I do feel that those people with a distinct disdain for web 2.0 is due to disappointment because they didn’t know what to do and how to do it successfully. And the message is simple. Create a profile and get involved in existing conversations without plugging a product (consumer web 2.0 marketing). For business to business 2.0 marketing, there are many business social networks around now, and it’s a case of finding the site where all your potential contacts will be networking and introduce yourself, offering to help where you can. Just like in traditional business networking.
Q: How do you think new media will change the PR industry in the next 5 years?
A: Many TV stations are asking for the public to create the news by uploading news and picture stories directly into the studio, thereby leaving the PR industry in a precarious position. Now look at the democratized internet where a news story could be published as a video, blog post or picture story within 5 minutes of the event.
The PR industry may become restricted to big campaigns and therefore end up merging with digital media and advertising agencies as the overlap between the two grows bigger and bigger.
The role of a PR will change drastically as media relations activity will change to blogger/webmaster activity primarily via email or something like Twitter.
I see PR agencies becoming or forming their own newswires or portals, particularly the larger ones as they will have to disseminate information themselves to retain the ‘freshness’ of news.
Q: What potential effect could being a late adopter of new media have on a brand?
A: 5 years ago, many business advisers and marketers strongly recommended that all businesses must have an online presence. It is said that those that didn’t do so died, even at the peak of the recent boom economy.
Now an online presence is not enough, in order to build an awareness of any brand and get unsolicited advocates, the brand must be endorsed by customers, opinion formers and influencers. There must be lots of easily accessible information for prospective customers to view, interact with and contribute to if they wish. Ideally, the more interactive a brand is online as well as offline and the experience offered will surely get people talking.
In my opinion, it’s best to get started now and figure it out on the way, than be the last company in through the new media gate.
And yet another point of view worth considering! I think Desiree brings up a lot of valid points about social media and many of these points deserve a deeper look so I’ll be expanding on these ideas later in the blog. If you’d like to check out her blog, you can find it here. Thanks, Desiree!
