Social Media Misuses

By: Sarah Jones

There is a list on Mashable with 15 ways that people commonly misuse social media. While, the list is pertaining more towards people in general, I think some things on the list can pertain specifically towards public relations and social media professionals. Using social media platforms for personal use is very different from using it for your company. If you post something you shouldn't on your personal social media platforms you are only affecting yourself and some of your followers, if your profile is on private. However, if you work in social media for a corporation, accidentally posting something risky could cost you your job and the integrity of the company. That's why it's important to  make sure you are using every resource and being smart about your job in social media. It's a lot harder than people think.

The very first thing on the list is to make sure you have a plan. This is so important when working in social media. If you don't have a plan things tend to get messy very quickly. Knowing what you're going to do in advance saves you and the company from having a mess to clean up.

Source via Social Media Today

Other things on the list that I think are important is to not work alone or spread yourself to thin. That's why most companies have a team of people that are there just for managing the companies social media platforms. If you have one or two people managing 6 or 7 different sites it can get overwhelming and time consuming. However, if that's all the company has there are different ways to plan it accordingly. A social media plan is always a great and efficient start to push you in the right track for making smart social media decisions. For Twitter, using sites like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allows you to keep up with many different hashtags and newsfeeds at the same time. You can even schedule your tweets ahead of time so that would be one less thing you would have to post. However that could also get you into trouble with repetitive, boring content. 

Boring content is another misuse on the list which is definitely something you want to ignore. If you post the same content everyday the audience is going to get tired of reading your posts, skip right over it and probably unfollow you. You need to make sure you come up with engaging tweets and mix them up every so often in order to keep your readership and followers. This also could go along with posting in real time. Countless of brands have gotten into the habit of posting relevant content at the time it's happening. This means you will have to be working even when you're not in the work place. It would be a huge mistake to miss out on what is going on in the world and not including your company in the topic. For example, when the lights went out during last years Super Bowl Oreo was the first brand to immediately make a statement on the situation. It was a genius tweet and got everyone's attention. As a social media professional that is what you should strive to be like. Be smart, creative, and stay relevant in today's fast-paced world.

Dallas Hospital Live Tweets Surgery

By: Sarah Jones

Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas used Twitter to live tweet a heart transplant on Monday. The woman was placed on the donor list earlier this month and on Monday she received the news that there was a heart waiting for her. She signed an agreement saying she allowed the hospital to tweet and share pictures of the surgery on Twitter. This makes the first-ever live tweet of a surgery, and an important surgery at that. For privacy reasons her name used when referring to her in tweets was Jane. The hospital used the hashtag #HeartTXLive and had a team of six people tweeting during the entire process.

Source via Baylor Health/Twitter

According to Baylor Health's Twitter, it would seem the live tweet's purpose was to bring awareness to people who need organ transplants and encourage people to register to be organ donors. I think it was a fantastic idea, and it seems to have worked really well. 

Source via Baylor Health/Twitter

Not only did the hospital live tweet the event and bring in awareness for the donor list, it also used Twitter as a way for people to share their experiences with being donors or have received a transplant.  Not only does it bring awareness to donors and the hospital itself, but it also allows people to talk to other people about it and get a conversation going. Using social media as a tool to create awareness is probably the best use of the platforms. Some many people are reached through online platforms and to see an entity using it for the greater good is a really awesome thing to see. 

Although this was great PR and awareness and everything turned out well, there is still that option something could have gone wrong during the surgery. Since they were live tweeting, it was such a brave move to decide to do so. I'm also sure the PR team had a plan in place in case things did go awry, because I don't think they would go through with something so huge unless they knew what they were doing. Good PR is having best and worst case scenarios and how to go about both sides, and I think Baylor Health has a really smart PR team behind them, and I think more hospitals and nonprofits should utilize social media in a way that brings awareness to whatever issue they stand behind. 

Do We Need Ethics in Media?

By: Sarah Jones


Yes, of course we do. Recently, ethics is something that the media hasn't been doing well with. In the fast-paced world we have now found ourselves in where we can find anything in a matter of seconds has hindered the media's job of getting useful information out to the public. I think the news and brand industry has become so obsessed with being the first ones to break a story or use relevant trends in an ad that it often forgets what its objective was to begin with. It's the media's responsibility to give people the truth, and it's important to do that with integrity and honesty, and I just feel like it has strayed from that. It could be because the media is trying to gain readership, or viewers but it should be going about that in a manner that gains trust instead of driving people away.

An example of media ethics is when the New York Times released the street name of Officer Darren Wilson during the Ferguson coverage. There was a heavy debate on whether this was unethical. The Times had also included a photo of Wilson's marriage license which some people thought had contained the exact address, however it ended up being an address to a law firm. The Times removed the photograph, but what was still an issue was in the actual article the reporter named the street that the couple lived on. So while the exact address remained unknown people would still know the name of the street. It's a common practice to include the name of streets in news stories; however, in a case like this where it's a very high-profile story I think it's unethical to give out the street name. Even though the Wilson's had left their home they would in theory come back at some point and even if the story had blown over for the most part there still could be some threat to the couple. This is an example how the media needs to make ethical decisions on a case-by-case basis. Each situation is different and it's important to look at each carefully to determine how ethical it would. In this case it would be unethical because of the safety involved. No matter what happened or who was at fault personal safety should still be a priority. It's also just another example of how news outlets are in a hurry to be the first to get a piece of information out to the public, or spin a high-profiled story in a different direction first.

With the recent Brian Williams scandal it's a great example of why ethics is needed. Williams made a mistake when recounting a story that he covered 12 years ago. In the story he told it the way it happened, but over the years since then he has changed it to seem like he was in the helicopter that was shot at. While he did apologize for the fabrication something as serious as war shouldn't be misrepresented. The people who have never been in war don't know what it's like to be in combat, and it's the media's job to give people a sense of what soldiers have to go through. Many thought it wasn't appropriate for Williams to make it seem like he went through it when he didn't. It's disrespectful in a way for the men and women who have gone through it for him tell a terrifying tale that didn't happen to him. While it was Williams' job to give people at home an accurate depiction of war, it's not something that should be messed with and where ethics should be a major factor. It's hard to trust someone after they've made a fabrication and because the media is often looked upon as trusted sources for news it should be held to a higher standard for responsibility with information.

The media has such a wide audience that watches daily and I think it's important to think about everyone's thoughts and feelings that could be affected by what is being reported or said on a certain subjects. You can't please everyone, but it's also important to think of others before thinking of getting ratings or readership. At the end of the day we're all just humans and we deserve honesty and integrity above all else.  It's important to remember, in media or business, the decisions you make effects a lot more people than just yourself. The people you are talking about have loved ones that could also be hurt by what you say. I think everyone needs to remember to look at the big picture before making an ethical decision, and at the end of the day it's your conscious that needs to be okay with the decisions made.

Twitter and Google Team-Up



By: Sarah Jones

 

It's been reported that Twitter has made a deal with Google that allows tweets to be searchable through the search engine. So anything tweeted by anyone will automatically be shown in a Google search result.

 

Which is terrible news for the average, every day, users of Twitter and celebrities and high profile people who are more prone to make accidental tweets. If people thought their privacy was low before, it's about 20 more feet under now. Now people are going to really need to be careful about what they tweet even more than before. It doesn't specify what happens to tweets once deleted. Although, I'm sure they probably aren't gone from the Google database, just like they aren't gone if they get screenshot.

 

However, it's great news for people in the marketing, public relations, and advertising industries.

Source: Sheena Levi via Twitter

This deal is another way for brands to get their product out to the market. Imagine how many people are being reached already, and with this addition it will be even more. With the use of pairing SEO keywords, hashtags, and the tweet itself, there will be an endless amount of google results that will pop up for the brand. Although Twitter has had deals like this with other search engines like Bing, it has never been a source to find the exact tweet. It's always just been Twitter sharing user data with those search engines, but now the tweets themselves are searchable so marketers need to utilize this the most they can.

 



Super Bowl Commercial Controversies

By: Sarah Jones

This years Super Bowl ads had quite an impact on viewers. Two in particular caused a lot of stir on social media sites, including Twitter. The Chevrolet commercial caused everyone to believe that the TV had gone out, and what was even worse was that the commercial aired in the early portion of the game.

                                          Source: YouTube

Although, how much worse would it have been if the commercial aired when the game was close. Either way it was a genius and memorable commercial that people are still talking about a week later.

Another commercial that caused more controversy than any of the others was the Nationwide commercial with the little boy.

                                         Source: YouTube

Many people were confused and shocked about the content in the commercial. A lot of people didn't really understand why it had to be a child, or where they were trying to go with message. It caused outrage on Twitter questioning Nationwide on why they would show such a commercial during the Super Bowl. Honestly, the Super Bowl would be the perfect place to show that commercial because it reaches such a bug audience. I think one of the reasons why people took such a disliking to it is because the Super Bowl commercials are more widely known to be on the more humorous side and this one wasn't.

Nationwide chose to take a more serious matter and show it somewhere they knew would get the most exposure and bring awareness to their new program, Make Safe Happen, which they announced in a press release on January 23, 2015 before the Super Bowl commercial aired. Make Safe Happen is a program that brings awareness to the fact that preventable injuries are the number one cause of death among children. In the press release it talks about how this subject is a difficult one to talk about, but that it needs to be talked about. Another statement was released by Nationwide on the day of the Super Bowl to respond to the criticism of the commercial. In the statement Nationwide said the purpose of the commercial was to start a conversation. So that's what they did, Nationwide showed the commercial about Make Safe Happen at the Super Bowl and caused everyone to talk about it. They did their job and stood by it.