Tag Archives: publics

New Ways To Communicate

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

The Internet is not just content, it is also populated by a myriad of ways to communicate. Communication on the Internet is no longer the exchange of emails, publishing and reading html pages.

We have been using the term “social media” to describe the channels of online communication that somehow level the playing field between people and organizations. In fact, social media channels allow for publics to form with relative ease and gives them the ability to communicate in real time at a very low cost. It is therefore no surprise that these publics are able to organize and act to influence an organization or a government institution.

These organizations then face a new challenge, they must monitor the online dialogue and obtain permission to participate in that dialogue. But it is not only a matter of monitoring, it is also a matter of choosing in which channels it is important to participate. It is not just a matter of which channels are the most used, it is also important to identify the ones were the most engaged publics communicate.

But “social media” is also a term used to describe that same online dialogue. In that aspect, it is important to listen and to infer the values and values system to which an organization must adhere to or at least understand to build a middle ground.

The 3 Areas of Search Engine Optimization

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

When managing a website, one of the goals is to be listed as high as possible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Working towards this goal is what is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In Public Relations we need to divide the practice into three areas, Programming, Content and Relationships.

Programming

I do not mean that we as communication professionals should take charge of programming a website, or even optimizing the software on our own.

I do however mean to say that it is important to have a small grasp of the technology which powers a website, how it works and what alternatives are available. There are also several features of a website that make it more accessible to search engines, such as readable URLs, sitemaps and a careful semantic structure.

Content

Most of the time, PR practitioners will focus on building good Content. In fact, great content is still of the utmost importance. We can divide this area into two main concerns, one is providing Content with a good structure and organization, in which case Matt Cutt’s videos on SEO are a great help in understanding how content must be written for the web.

Another concern is in building relevant content. This means first and foremost to be aware of the publics that surround us and what their interests are. The next step is in finding common ground, and if it doesn’t exist we must take charge in building it.

Only we know to whom we are reaching out can we look into ways of building relevant content and becoming relevant to them.

Relationships

We build relationships of all forms and sizes, some positive, others neutral or negative. And the truth of the matter is that the Web was built to allow relationships to form, specially those relationships that lead to collaboration and cooperation.

When we create a website and publicize it, it ripples through the web resonating to a greater or lesser extent with its constituents. If the content is actually useful and valuable, it will be linked too, and while it is being linked to, in an underlying and sometimes unconscious process it is being given a set of psycho-sociological values.

We can reinforce this effect with advertising, relevant link exchanges, sponsored links in SERP, or any other artificial means. However, these tactics will prove less successful if our online discourse lacks relevance to a number of publics and to a certain context.

A SEO plan will only prove effective if it includes these three areas, focusing on just one of them or simply not taking the time to coordinate efforts between the PR department and the Webdesign team will result in erratic results.

Stakeholder Mapping at the Spring Barcamp in Porto

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

Attending a barcamp means that you should do your best to share an idea, projects you are working on, or knowledge that may be useful to others. That alone is good enough reason to attend, another one would be the opportunity to discuss these ideas with people with different backgrounds.

The Spring Barcamp was June 5th at Hub Porto and I opted to present a few examples of stakeholder mapping. It made sense to me given the fact that there were a few startups attending and that we would be talking about an important part of environmental scanning.

As usual, the interesting bit came after the slides.

One of the questions from the audience had to do with communication channels that stakeholders used. To explain, I believe that in some communication plans we may be able to clearly measure communication with a single stakeholder or public.

This has both to do with how we structure communication and the profile of a stakeholder group or public.

When we look into the profile of different publics we will find that they have different routines and different ways to find the information and content they need. While some journalists who cover IT may appreciate access to an RSS Feed of Press Releases, others may still prefer email and all of them may want the possibility to talk with someone directly.

Faced with this or other scenarios, an organization may choose to create separate channels for media and consumers. In doing so it will be creating the means to measure their effectiveness with a key Public and to better understand the nature of the relationship that is formed.

But it is important to keep in mind that Publics are not passive, and most of the time they opt to conduct their dialogue in channels that we either do not control or where we must first build an online presence. Wikis, forums and email newsgroups are a clear example of having to adapt our communication routines to a public.

As João Duarte made me realize, one of the issues that leads to a poor communication plan is that organizations seldom take the time to identify stakeholders and publics, much less to gather information and profile each one.

I will post a bit more on the Spring Barcamp as soon as I have the time, in the meantime please feel free to leave your remarks and comments.

Grunig on the Digitalisation of Public Relations

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

Philip Young’s blog, Mediations, is one that I follow for quite some time now. Yesterday, it mentioned an article on PRism by Jim Grunig titled Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation. Among other subjects, Grunig comments on the book written by Phillip Young and David Phillips, Online Public Relations 2nd Edition.

Both the article and the book qualify as important readings, but for this post we will focus on a few key ideias that I believe are interesting to explore.

Internet Penetration and Use

The first issue that I find interesting is in regards to the use and implementation of the Internet:

“As of June 30, 2009, there were 1,668,870,408 internet users in the world— 24% of the world’s population of nearly 6.8 billion (Internet World Stats, 2009).”

If less than a quarter of the world’s population uses the Internet and already it is something of great importance, we can only expect it to become even more relevant.

But Internet users are one thing, penetration is something completely different. If we plot a map with data from the Internet World Stats website, we can compare these two metrics in a per country basis.

Internet Penetration

Internet Users


Original Source for Both Maps

Both maps substantiate Grunig’s claim that

“Internet usage is higher in developed regions of the world (50.1% in Europe and 60.1% in Oceania/Australia) than in developing regions (23.7% in the Middle East and 30.0% in the Latin American/Caribbean region). Although only 18.5% of the Asian population uses the internet, 42.2% of all internet users in the world are in Asia”.

Grunig then states that ”digital media have made most public relations global and force organisations to think globally about their public relations practice.” Although I do like the idea, in a world of computer mediated communication there is still a language and an access barrier to be overcome. There is another aspect pertinent to the way we communicate online, which is that even though we are able to communicate with someone across the globe chances are that we will communicate most with the ones closer to us.

This means that even if it is true that organizations can think globally, it is also truer that the internet allows for a precise communication with certain publics based on location, hobbies, and other characteristics. A clear example of this possibility is in twitter’s geotagging feature, which allows for mobile devices and twitter clients to broadcast their geographic location. In regards to access and use, we need to ask ourselves who is in fact using the Internet and how. China’s large number of users and low index of penetration leaves me specially curious.

At the same time, we still do not know what to expect in regards to the evolution of digital communication in the different countries. Will all countries follow a path as linear as a railway? Does that railway with all its forks and branches lead to the same destination? To be on the safe side, PR should concentrate on understanding the evolution of digital communication in each country.

We can look to the UK and Portugal as examples, while in the United Kingdom, blogs became a widely used form of communication that is now changing. In Portugal blogs did not manage to gain the same size and relevance as in the United Kingdom, Social Networks on the other hand seem to be more relevant each day.

Online Publics

On the subject of online publics and the loss of control, so recurrent when talking about social media, the article states that Publics have always had control over the message substantiating that claim with studies that go back to the 1960′s. But the Internet does force us to re-think PR theory, in particular the Situational Theory of Publics. Indeed publics have always had control over the message and they do in fact create themselves, but what guides their collective behaviour and an individual’s choice between two identical groups/publics?

In this article and in the Situational Theory Grunig puts the emphasis on problems and issues. The concept of Issues alone does not seem sufficient to explain or actions as individuals or as groups, and in our social contexts not everything is an issue, problem or conflict that needs to be resolved. It is my belief that values and values systems of both individuals and groups play an important role in guiding our behaviour and the forming of groups and publics, particularly online. This does not mean that we should abandon the concept of issues entirely, but that the situational theory as it stands now does not help Public Relations practice in an online context.

Further on, Grunig states that “The digital media are ideal for environmental scanning research, and there are many tools available for scanning cyberspace for problems, publics, and issues.“. The two-way symmetrical model mentioned earlier in the article does present itself as the one to apply in Online Public Relations, with this in mind I feel we should focus on areas that go beyond research and scanning. Specifically this would mean using that research and an identification of online publics to create response mechanisms aligned with the need for a quick reply and for a coherent corporate voice.

On the issue of evaluation, the article reads:

A number of analytical schemes have been developed to evaluate the effects of digital media programmes (see Jeffries-Fox, 2004; Paine 2007a, 2007b; Phillips & Young, 2009). These range from simple measures of hits on a website to measures of cognitions, attitudes, and behaviours, as well as indicators of the types and quality of relationships. In many cases, these measures can be applied directly to online content. In other cases, additional survey or experimental research will be required.

In my view, the information made available by the Internet (giving us access to the visible part of the communication between and within publics) can go much further than the research and monitoring stages. It can be used to evaluate corporate communication in a series of new ways and in real time, and the behavioural aspect mentioned by Grunig will no doubt be a key component to understand our online activities as individuals, groups and publics.

For organization’s, the Web can provide valuable information and even help answer a few key questions, such as “who are our publics? what do they talk about?” and even “what do they think of us?”

Last Remarks

Although long, this post reflects only a few ideas and opinions that I believe to be specially  important on the article and I may return to it in the future. I am sure that Dr. Grunig would be able to counter-argument my view on most (if not all) of the questions described here and even (hopefully) prove me wrong.

If you made it this far down the page, please leave a comment and share your thoughts.