After this weeks lecture on the omnipresent phenomena, social media. Delivered by guest media socialite Daryl Willcox, it became even more apparent to us sat in the lecture hall how this new generation, online, social tool is provoking implications for strategic communications through different channels of our vast media landscape and how its going to alter the industries in which we have committed ourselves to.
Is it really all about social media in the future in the disciplines of PR, Marketing and Advertising? Well many professionals seem to think so, even Daryl himself encouraged us to use our smart phones (as I looked around the room it seemed everyone was unlocking, Blackerry's iPhones and HTC's and logging into their Twitter accounts) to tweet the ever elusive - #smthefuture.
Brands (using their PR contacts and aids to the full extent) haven't being naive to the fact that everything is converging from offline to online media, with old techniques such as print publishing becoming a thing of the past for communications to consumers, whether this is the ethical route to commence discourse is however debatable. Rather than letting audiences chose whether they access the content themselves isn't much of an option anymore with brands communicating on every platform to become visible, apposed to the other end of the spectrum as to whether this is viable, to innocent web users.
In these blogs I always ponder for a second which brands have caught my eye to connote as a suitable example to reinforce the content, yet it seems to always boil down to the point I'm struggling to chose which brand/company/agency I should chose as the list is endless. It really does seem everyone has an online presence these days especially on social networking sites, the obvious, favourite culprits being Facebook and Twitter. However on this occasion I have gone for a company who probably shouldn't have jumped on the social media bandwagon previously discussed within a recent seminar.
Wilts and Dorset is a local bus service which runs across counties in the South West of England and have created their own Facebook page, yet, like many other companies, have merely been a sheep following the herd. What happened to the days of just looking at a timetable when you got to the bus stop? I understand it may be easier to gain information on a query but even though the company is online, do they really have the man power for someone to instantly respond...either way you may miss the bus anyway. In the case of Wilts and Dorset trying to harness the use of social media hasn't entirely gone their way with negative discourse dominating the page, arguments occurring among the customers and the PR taking a big knock. Even though they company has a Facebook page doesn't really mean they have truly grasped the real concept of social media, getting it because everyone else has doesn't count! If anything SM isn't doing wonders for the brand, it just all seems a bit pointless. Nevertheless no one can stop the rise of social media, if a brand doesn't have it, people feel they are living in the stone age.
Social Media really is shaping to be the future (whether it's ethical, or even logical, or not)...until the next big thing comes our way.
Brands (using their PR contacts and aids to the full extent) haven't being naive to the fact that everything is converging from offline to online media, with old techniques such as print publishing becoming a thing of the past for communications to consumers, whether this is the ethical route to commence discourse is however debatable. Rather than letting audiences chose whether they access the content themselves isn't much of an option anymore with brands communicating on every platform to become visible, apposed to the other end of the spectrum as to whether this is viable, to innocent web users.
In these blogs I always ponder for a second which brands have caught my eye to connote as a suitable example to reinforce the content, yet it seems to always boil down to the point I'm struggling to chose which brand/company/agency I should chose as the list is endless. It really does seem everyone has an online presence these days especially on social networking sites, the obvious, favourite culprits being Facebook and Twitter. However on this occasion I have gone for a company who probably shouldn't have jumped on the social media bandwagon previously discussed within a recent seminar.
Wilts and Dorset is a local bus service which runs across counties in the South West of England and have created their own Facebook page, yet, like many other companies, have merely been a sheep following the herd. What happened to the days of just looking at a timetable when you got to the bus stop? I understand it may be easier to gain information on a query but even though the company is online, do they really have the man power for someone to instantly respond...either way you may miss the bus anyway. In the case of Wilts and Dorset trying to harness the use of social media hasn't entirely gone their way with negative discourse dominating the page, arguments occurring among the customers and the PR taking a big knock. Even though they company has a Facebook page doesn't really mean they have truly grasped the real concept of social media, getting it because everyone else has doesn't count! If anything SM isn't doing wonders for the brand, it just all seems a bit pointless. Nevertheless no one can stop the rise of social media, if a brand doesn't have it, people feel they are living in the stone age.
No comments:
Post a Comment