John Grant discusses social networks in his book “The New Marketing Manifesto” and describes various possibilities social networks offer. According to Grant, the power of virtual communities lays within the fact that people group because of shared interest and not by accidental location. According to “The Guardian”, the key factor for success in any internet web site or virtual community is the space for like-minded people to meet and chat. The Guardian newspaper’s New Media Group conducted a research that shows that while people may initially be drawn to a site by fancy production values, strong branding and promotion, they go back to meet people and participate in their chosen interests.
By joining special interest groups, people feel part of an idea and therefore become very loyal with it. Gathering these like-minded people means creating narrow target audiences, which are easy to address for public relations matters.
By joining special interest groups, people feel part of an idea and therefore become very loyal with it. Gathering these like-minded people means creating narrow target audiences, which are easy to address for public relations matters.
4 comments:
Hey Kristina!
I agree with everything you've written about social networking sites so far, but i wonder how loyal people are to them. My opinion is that these sites are just a fad - a trend that everyone is crazy about today, but is likely to forget all about tomorrow. I might be wrong, and only time will tell, but i'm talking from my own experience of social networking. I've joined hi5 and a Dutch networking website (don't ask :)), and my friends keep persuading me to join MySpace and Facebook, but i just can't be bothered with these sites anymore. It's like you said, these things need time investment and effort. I've joined a couple of groups, but i get so many friend requests and messages now that i can't even be bothered to look at them anymore. It was all interesting and exciting to begin with, but now it's just boring.
Hi Kristine,
Social networking is now definetly the new trend everyone is joining them and friends even try to beg me to join them but I don't know I just for some reason feel this trend is going to fade. The reason why I think that in the past everyone used to join mirc then that was not interesting anymore, then came pal talk, then it was msn, and now its Hi5, etc. I feel like technological innovations will continue and people will become bored from one thing and move to the next thing. So in my opinion there isn't much loyalty, target audience might be loyal for a while but then when the new thing comes along and word of mouth spreads it everyone will go to the next thing.
In one of the latest issues of PRweek they presented a study suggesting that traditional media is still very popular, even among younger people. I think this is an interesting study showing that PR doesn’t necessarily have to rush into the new media wave. As you state, new media is still a bit complex and messy, and it takes a lot of time to find the right space to place your message. Many PRO’s are struggling to ‘crack the code’ of new media. Perhaps they should spend their time focusing on the messages they want to deliver rather than what channel they use?
Yes, I think you are right; online communities do offer PRPs insight into what consumers, pressure groups, NGOs etc. think and feel about something. It gives PRPs access to public opinion, access that they did not have before, at least not in the same extent as now. By examining web pages, blogs, discussion forums etc PRPs can now analyse public opinion, which gives them the opportunity to better form their strategies and messages. They can also respond faster to potential crisis because they can proactively respond and handle false information or rumours before it evolves into a crisis. In fact, according to UK’s leading crisis management experts, one of the most positive developments in crisis communications in recent years is the internet because public opinion is now in the open.
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