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Do New Media Pose Any Serious Challenge to Traditional Media? February 22, 2009

Posted by Angelia Chandra in New Media, Research data, Social Media, Traditional Media, YouTube Videos, traditional media vs new media.
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In this post, I’d like to discuss what has happened to traditional media after the emergence of new media. I’ve made a video to show you my opinion based on some research data. So, take a look at it and you’ll find the answer to the question I mentioned in this post title.


This video is created using Xtranormal application and edited using Windows Movie Maker.

The script and whitepaper are available for download.

Social Media Release January 7, 2009

Posted by Angelia Chandra in Research data, Social Media, Social Media Release, YouTube Videos.
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We all know press release is the basic yet important tool in PR. Has press release died after the emergence of Web 2.0? Of course not. In fact, press release has relived and transformed into a PR 2.0 platform so called the Social Media Release (SMR).

I recently read the book “PR 2.0: New Media. New Tools, New Audiences” by Deirdre K. Breakenridge and here are some useful information on what to include in a SMR according to him:

  • Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds (direct news feeds on content related to the subject matter as well as links to content).
  • Photo libraries with high resolution images. (These images are for download into a print publication.)
  • MP3 files (a digital audio encoding method to reduce the size of an audio file for easy download) or a podcast.
  • Video footage for Video-On-Demand (VOD).
  • Links to previous coverage on a topic with the ability to use del.icio.us or Digg for social bookmarking. (Journalists can tag their favourite information by locating, classifying, and ranking noteworthy references and resources.)
  • Technorati is a leader in “what’s happening on the World Live Web.” Because bloggers commonly link to other blogs, Technorati searches and organises blogs, and tracks how blogs are linked together (by recording the relevance of the links to your subject matter).

Therefore, press release is now more than just a page of paper filled only with graphics and texts. Now, journalists can get more data from SMR in shorter time period. Journalists can download materials that are useful in the publication such as pictures, videos, podcasts directly from the SMR. All of these information could also help journalists to cover news completely as more and more journalists go online to retrieve news. The “2004 Media in Cyberspace” study described in an online article by John V. Pavlik Ph.D. (p.5) discovered that:

  • 76% of reporters go online to find new sources and experts.

  • 73% of reporters go online to find press releases.

  • 81% of reporters go online daily to do searching.

  • 92% of journalists go online as part of their story research.

Furthermore, the other important aspects of SMR is that it is not only for use by the journalists. It is also for bloggers who are interested in writing about a certain company or subject matter. Consumers or public who are online could also gain access to the SMR. As such, SMR also helps the company to communicate directly with its consumers.

Here is a useful SMR template from Shift Communications – a known PR agency in the USA. Shift Communications claimed to be the first one to create a PR 2.0 SMR template. This template is free for download from their website:

smr-template

Click for Original PDF Document

You’ll notice that some basic press release rules are still there. Contact person, headline, main facts, quotes and boilerplate statements are still important in SMR. So don’t forget the 5Ws and other rules in writing a traditional press release even though we are now living the Web 2.0 world.

I also found one video on YouTube about Social Media Release by WebitPR agency. It is quite useful to help one understands SMR even though the agency is promoting itself with the video ;-) Put that aside, take an unbiased look at it here:


Social Networking Sites – Part 1 January 3, 2009

Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Research data, Social Media, Social Networking.
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Having known from the Top Social Media Sites 2008 that Facebook, one of the popular social networking sites, has massively grown 116% in a year reaching 200 million users, I am interested to look further into this.

What actually is people doing with social networking sites? How does it benefit the PR industry in being a channel to promote and engage brands with the public? According to the McCann research – the Social Media Tracker Wave 3 (conducted on March 08 ) – below are the things people typically do with their social networking profiles:

content-posted-on-social-network

Click for Larger Image

The McCann research also mentioned that it is important to “exist inside social networks to create profiles, develop networks to distribute content and employ advertising and sponsorship to drive engagement with consumers.” I was curious to know how brands exist in those social networking sites so I decided to search for any existing branded-profiles in Facebook and here are some interesting one that I found:

  • Apple Students, has 990,791 fans who have connected their profile with the Apple Students profile. You can get all the latest news of Apple products in here. There are also some interesting sections to attract its members by providing free songs to be downloaded and most importantly special discounts up to $200 for the student members.

  • Twilight, the famous novel series and movies, has 1,089,950 fans. It provides links to the official websites, updates for the latest news, pictures and upcoming events for Twilight.

On the other hand, from the graph above we can also see that 23.3% users install applications on their social networking sites. Hence, I was searching again to find out whether there is any branded-application exists in Facebook and actually there are quite many! Here are just a few examples:

  • Send Ben and Jerry Ice Cream application, allows users to send virtual Ben and Jerry ice cream to each other. It has 75 different flavours of the real ice cream to be sent out. It also provides reviews and discussion board sections. Currently, there are 36,904 monthly active users sending out those virtual ice creams to each other.

  • Virtual iPhone is one interesting application that allows people to explore the iPhone device virtually. There are discussion boards, reviews section, etc posted by Facebook users who have added this application to their profiles. You can see that there is also a lucky draw to win an iPhone simply by adding this application to the profile. As such, this is one interesting way to engage people to participate. Virtual iPhone currently has 4,969 fans in Facebook.

It is very impressive to see that these brands succeed in connecting their brands with the Facebook users simply by asking the users to be fans of the brand’s or the product’s profile or by installing an application onto their profiles. In my upcoming blog posts, there will be some tips on how to be successful in using social networking sites as a channel for PR. So come back soon! :-)

Top Social Media Sites December 31, 2008

Posted by Angelia Chandra in Research data, Social Media, Social Networking, Weblogs.
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I found one interesting statistics data called Top Social Media Sites 2008 published at www.washingtonpost.com today. This research is conducted by comScore, an Internet marketing research company that provides marketing data and services to many of the Internet’s largest businesses. (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComScore)

comScore ranked websites by its worldwide traffic stats dated November 2008, as follows:

  1. Blogger (222 million)

  2. Facebook (200 million)

  3. MySpace (126 million)

  4. WordPress (114 million)

  5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)

  6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)

  7. Flickr (64 million)

  8. hi5 (58 million)

  9. Orkut (46 million)

  10. Six Apart (46 million)

  11. Baidu Space (40 million)

  12. Friendster (31 million)

  13. 56.com (29 million)

  14. Webs.com (24 million)

  15. Bebo (24 million)

  16. Scribd (23 million)

  17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)

  18. Tagged (22 million)

  19. imeem (22 million)

  20. Netlog (21 million)

Blogger, which is on top of the chart, has grown 44% since the last survey in November 2007. Facebook, surprisingly, is up 116% reaching 200 million users. My Space is pretty steady while WordPress has grown 68%. On the other hand, Windows Live Spaces is down 22%.

Click here for similar ranking in 2007.

The Trend of Blogging December 26, 2008

Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Research data, Social Media, Weblogs.
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Weblogs is one of the applications that play an important role in the PR 2.0 industry.

This year, there are about 346 millions people in this world that read blogs and there is an 11% growth compared to last year. (source: The McCann research – the Social Media Tracker Wave 3).

More and more people are reading blogs online. So I think instead of spending a lot of money for media relations programme trying to convince reporters to cover news, why not try to create a blog or target bloggers to help us convey our messages directly to our target public online? We no longer need to wait for the traditional media to cover our news. We are now free from their filter and we have the power to send our messages across directly to our targeted public and this is all so GREAT!

After setting up blogs or having bloggers write our stories, we should be happy that all our hard work are actually worth it. Just take a look at the research result below:

Blogs Usage

However, there is a problem. Not everyone is writing a favourable story for us. Someone might post, write or leave negative comments and/or stories in their blogs and we have no control over that. Of course, we should be worried about that!

However, according to David Meerman Scott in his book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, he said: “I strongly believe that comments from readers offering different viewpoints than the original post are actually a good thing on a blog, because they add credibility to your viewpoint by showing two sides of an issue and by highlighting that your readership is passionate enough to want to contribute to a debate on your blog”.

I agree with David as it is much more credible to have both positive and negative comments/stories on blogs. It makes much more sense to the readers that all the opinions do come from actual users of the products or services rather than just posting some edited comments on the blogs, for example. We need to welcome such negative feedbacks and then find an effective way to handle the criticisms.

PR and Web 2.0 – An Overview December 18, 2008

Posted by Angelia Chandra in PR and Web 2.0, Research data, Social Media.
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New media, especially the emergence of web 2.0, presents a significant impact for the Public Relations industry as it has challenged how public relations is practiced. PR is no longer only about sending out press releases to media and hoping to get the news appear on the media by building good relationship with the journalists. By the emergence of web 2.0, PR is now about communicating directly with the public without relying solely on the traditional media.

So what actually is web 2.0? To make it clear, I looked it up in Wikipedia and it says:

“The term Web 2.0 is described as the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web.”

Web 2.0 is about the interconnection and interaction between the web and the users. It allows users to do more than just get information from the web. Users can now participate and “interact” with the web. That’s why Web 2.0 could help PR to communicate directly with the public. I really think that It is a new, helpful channel for PR to disseminate information to the public and then somehow get feedback from them. Social media, one of the platforms based on Web 2.0, is used largely in the PR industry.

According to Universal McCann company, in one of its research - the Social Media Tracker Wave 3 (conducted in March 08), it defines social media as the online applications, platforms, media which aim to facilitate interaction, collaboration, and the sharing of content. The research shows that there is a significant growth of social media usage which includes social networking, blogs, RSS, widgets, podcasts, photo and video sharing, message boards and chat rooms from year to year.

social-media-usage

Click for Larger Image

More and more people are getting online and using social media. I think that it is important for PR to take a look and understand this growing trends of social media usage so we can then take advantage of it in conducting PR practices. It is both fun and challenging to make use of Web 2.0 as PR now has new channel to communicate with the public BUT no longer can control the spread of the public’s opinion because they can now express their opinion freely online, anytime and anywhere.

So how effective is new media used in the PR industry? Even better question: Should PR concentrate only in new media or use both new and traditional media? Well, keep following my blog and you’ll find out more..