SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Over the years social media has developed into a widespread world of its own. It has become an extremely valuable global market place for brands and as time has passed many more platforms have developed leaving a wide range of opportunities for brands/organisations to communicate with their stakeholders.

There are six main types of social media platforms the first being blogs which are primarily used to keep publics up to date on what a brand/organisation is doing. Blogs can either be self-hosted or part of an online blogging network such as blogger which has the added benefit of access to a pre-existing community. Blogs are arguably an essential aspect to PR practice in some sectors, for example fashion and beauty blogs have become extremely popular and many brands send products to bloggers in hope of gaining invaluable secondary recommendation through review.

Secondly there are micro-blogs, the most famous being Twitter which is used by a wide range of people globally on a daily, sometimes hourly basis to keep up-to-date with short-from news and content of the moment! Twitter is a great tool for listening to see what people are saying about a brand/organisation. It is also good for engaging with publics to build a brand as well as engagement in terms of customer services and directing people to the right communication channels rather than badmouthing about the issue on social media sites.

Thirdly there are social networks which are overlap features from other platforms for example one of the largest social networks is Facebook which includes aspects of micro-blogging in terms of ‘statuses’ and aspects from many other platforms for example internal messaging, discussion boards, groups, liking and blogging. Facebook is personal and has high levels of uptake across a great variety or publics globally thus it is a great platform for an over-arching social media presence. LinkedIn is another social network but is more about the ‘how to’ career based information sharing thus is particularly valuable to individual professionals and students but perhaps not best utilised by brands/organisations in terms of external communications. Nonetheless I do feel it can be useful for organisations to have a presence as it can be a convenient tool for aspects of internal communications and headhunting employees.

There are also other types of platforms which include social bookmarks, for example Stumble Upon, Digg and Pinterest, in which you can collect content which one finds useful or interesting. In my opinion Pinterest is about aspiration and is great for selling a brand story and image. However I do feel that this particular form of social media can be difficult for some organisations to utilise, yet Pinterest can be very valuable in certain sectors, for example in the fashion sector the use of Pinterest can allow for a brand to set themselves up as an opinion former in terms of what’s trending that particular season.

There are also video sharing sites are more for the ‘how to’, the most common being YouTube, which can be a great branding and broadcast tool. They are good for putting out content but there are also opportunities to increase engagement by asking stakeholders to submit videos. Video sharing sites can also be an invaluable tool for positioning brands/organisations as industry experts, for example Edelman do this very well by posting regular videos that position them as industry authority.

Finally there are image sharing sites which are mainly for things that are ‘in the moment’ just like Twitter but in a visual context. It can be used to encourage participation from stakeholders for example sharing photos from an event or using a product. This can be good in the beauty sector in terms of before and after images and general photos of publics using the products. One of the latest and most popular photo sharing sites is Instagram.

All in all each social media platform has differing opportunities for communications across a variety of sectors thus not all platforms are appropriate for all organisations. However I personally feel that to one of the main aspects of social media is generating traffic to raise brand awareness and engagement, therefore many organisations may see benefits from consistent, ethical and carefully planned content on the two most popular social networking sites of the time, currently Facebook and Twitter.