The roles of social media as the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia.

             In this mediated world, public relations (PR) professionals use social media every single day to keep in touch with the clients, to communicate with their customers and to respond to enquiries or problems. Social media is prevalently used by PR practitioners nowadays because of their flexibility and effective functions. Therefore, media such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogs and other social sites have quickly become significant tools in a PR practitioner’s large toolkit. Before I go further on this topic, let me first explain what PR and social media both are.

What is Public Relations?

            Many people often talk about public relations without knowing actually what it is. Frequently, they define public relations by some of its most noticeable techniques and strategies, such as publicity in a newspaper, a television interview with an organisation’s spokesperson, or the appearance of a celebrity at a special event. The field of PR has many aspects; some are obvious and some are subtle. Thus, people may understand only one element of a complicated activity. Some people may understand that PR is about how a group of people manage their relationship among themselves. However, other scholars have their own definitions on what PR is:

Scott M. Cutlip and Allen H. Center in the book titled “Effective Public Relations’, (Fifth Edition) stated that public relations is “the planned effort to influence opinion through socially responsible and acceptable performance, based on mutually satisfactory two-way communication”.

“Public relations practice is the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organization leaders, and implementing planned programmes of action which serve both the organisation’s and the public’s interest.” (A definition approved at the World Assembly of Public Relations in Mexico City in 1978 and endorsed by 34 national public relations organisations.)

“Public Relations (PR) is the determined, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.  Also understood as reputation management, the PR craft can be categorised into several broad practice areas, such as media relations, investor relations and etc.” (Definition given by Institutes of Public Relations Malaysia)

To sum up, public relations is about the practice to improve and seek to inculcate mutual understanding between the various organisations and the public and to establish and maintain a company’s image with the public.

 What is social media?

             Social media are media used for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogue. Social media have become the new “tool” for effective business marketing and sales. Thus, popular networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are social media usually used for socialisation and connecting friends, relatives and employees. (From Wikipedia.com)

             The roles of PR in Malaysia like any other countries are focused not only on one specific task. PR also involves various fields like marketing, press agentry, lobbying, advertising, media relations, investor relations, employee relations, public affairs and reputation management. The major task for PR is to create good relationship and mutual understanding with other parties including the public. Therefore to spread the news and information about the organisation, a number of specific types of media will be used like the printed media, electronic media, press media and also the social media. 

             Actually, social media and public relations have a very close relationship and are undoubtedly interconnected.  Tools such as websites, Facebook, blogs and etc have been used by organisations to disseminate messages and information to the public, promote their brand and products, clear the misunderstanding, build their own image and reputation and the like. Artists, entrepreneurs, companies, individuals and even the government – everybody in Malaysia is using the social media in the PR practices. Let us take a look at the current Malaysian Prime minister, Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak as an example. He has created his own blog in order to communicate with the people nationwide. Plus, he has also created a website for 1Malaysia concept that was launched recently so that he can impart info about 1Malaysia and at the same time receive feedback from the Malaysian public about the concept. We can see here that by using the social media, the prime minister not only can spread the news but also keep in touch with the people regardless of their status. This kind of communication is almost similar with face-to-face communication. The relationship between the leader and his people will be stronger and the leader also can build his reputation through the social media.

             In my opinion, the social media really plays as important tool for PR practitioners in Malaysia. It helps the organisation to achieve their goals and objectives in an effective manner. Therefore it is proven that the social media is really influential in building good relationship with the public rather than being only as a tool for PR practitioners to create publicity.

        

             What do you think about the role of the social media as the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia? Leave your comments and share your golden point of view with me. Thank you.