My fifth month is coming to a close on my Mastery Journey, as I work towards my MA in PR. When I began this journey I had the opportunity to use critical thinking to pre-assess each months content ahead of reaching the class. This month’s course was Innovative Public Relations Tools and Resources. My assessment was that like the title suggests, this course is designed to put tools in my toolbox. To help me harness and understand the various social media platforms, comprehend the roles of new emerging technology and learn how each of the systems can affect strategy and deliberate communication. This seems to have been a fair assessment.
During this month I learned of many different tools that are out there to make my life easier as a PR professional. One key tool is the ability to schedule content across almost all social media platforms. Some of those tools are native in the platform and others are third party resources that can be free or may require some cost. But this gives me the ability to better manage my time as a professional. I can connect accounts to these tools, take a day to create content specific to each platform, schedule the posts and they automatically go live at the appointed time and place. Most of these resources also offer tools that allow you to see prior engagement, reach etc.… to gain a better understanding of content timing, even content styling. These tools/resources included Meta Business Suite, Later, and Hootsuite. I was able to independently research tools a PR professional may use on a daily basis which brought me to understanding the importance of listening to social media response.
There were two key takeaways I had from lessons this month. The first was connecting emotionally with your audience and social media/marketing’s ability to bridge the gap in the instance of division. This was demonstrated through Coca-Cola’s Small World campaign to India and Pakistan (Coca-Cola, 2013). These were two countries whose government had divided them, despite being neighbors. Coca-Cola came in and emplaced vending machines with simulcasting screens allowing users in both countries to participate in activities together meanwhile being rewarded with a cold Coke. This showed the people that they weren’t different and could be united, despite their perceived differences. The second take away came from Gary Vee’s keynote speech in Hamburg, 2017. He brought the main idea that he day trades attention (Vaynerchuk, 2017). He views all interactions on social media as transactional, using trading terms like arbitrage. Which is buying a commodity cheap on one market and selling it for a small profit on another (Stobierski, 2021). But before we can make any content successful, no matter how great it is or how much of a solution we can offer the viewer, we have to figure out how to capture their attention. It doesn’t have to be long, but if we don’t have their attention, they won’t digest our content. It would all be in vain, the time we spent curating the perfect message is wasted.
References
Coca-Cola. (2013, May 19). Coca-Cola Small World Machines - bringing India & Pakistan together. YouTube. Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts_4vOUDImE
Hootsuite, Inc. (n.d.). Social Media Marketing & Management dashboard - hootsuite. Social Media Marketing and Management Dashboard. Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://www.hootsuite.com/
Later. (n.d.). Later: All-in-one Social Media Management & Link in bio tool. Later Social Media Marketing. Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://later.com/
Login and Access Meta Business Suite and business manager. English (US). (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://business.facebook.com/
Social Media Monitoring Tool. Brand24. (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://brand24.com/
Stobierski, T. (2021, July 20). What is arbitrage? 3 strategies to know. Business Insights Blog. Retrieved August 24, 2022, from https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-arbitrage
Vaynerchuk, G. (2017, March 13). Online marketing rockstars Gary Vaynerchuk keynote | Hamburg 2017. YouTube. Retrieved August 24, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_6yFerLNmU
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