Social Media: Perfect or Poison?

Social Media seems to be a controversial topic today. Some people see the good in it and how it has to potential to revolutionize communication and networking. Others see social media as being sleazy with your resources and that it is not a professional way to network. In David Meerman Scott's book, "Real-Time Marketing & PR", chapter 13 covers the topic of companies social media policies. In the forum this week, I posted two companies social media policies; Adidas' and the Los Angeles Times. Those two companies are pretty successful and have been towards the top of the food chain in their respective fields. One reason could be they have adapted to the world we live in and have advanced their marketing, public relations, and publicity. The book states,"engage your marketplace right now, free your people to communicate in real-time." This made me think of the "United Breaks Guitars" incident and how they're social media policy came into play with the YouTube storm swirling around them. The social media policy in play was obviously not a strong or sensible policy because United did not react in real-time. In that situation, social media and a real-time reaction would have been so greta for United. I feel as though social media gives us an opportunity as an organization or company to try and level with our audience. When people see a large corporation or someone with a large platform make an effort to connect with them, it has more magnitude than just 140 characters. It creates a good image, it builds trust and allows the audience to have a closer connection with the said organization or company. I do admit social media can be abused, but that is why the policies are made. To prevent people from abusing it or using it inappropriately. I personally believe social media will do nothing but improve the nature of business, PR, and almost any aspect of the business professional world.

Instagram Blows up on 9/11 post

In his newest movie, Entourage, actor Adrian Grenier has received a lot of publicity and fame for the film. This past week on his Instagram account, he received a lot of scrutiny and insults, due to his posted picture in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The post read the following: "R.I.P the 2,996 Americans who died in 9/11," the graphic said below an image of the Twin Towers. "R.I.P the 1,455,590 innocent Iraqis who died during the U.S. invasion for something they didn't do." The post caused quite the uproar and had some graphic comments left that aren't appropriate for this post. "Disrespectful!! You are a horrible American!!" a follower commented. The article that was written about Grenier's post said that he deleted the post, but as social media and news has taught us so many times, whatever you put out there, it can always be found and retraced. A post like that on a day of infamy and solace is something that in my opinion, deserves an apology, and he has not yet given a response to the post besides deleting it. If we put our real-time marketing hats on for a second, we can tell that this is a bad move on Grenier's part for not responding to "crisis". His image is definitely in danger, at least it is in the U.S. Social media is tearing him apart for that post and it should be interesting to see how he responds to it all, if even does end up responding. 

Embracing the Tweet: Real-Time methods

Twitter is more than an app. Twitter has become a global phenomenon that has linked people, friends, and businesses to connections that wouldn't be possible without it. The reading in "Real-Time Marketing and PR" talked about "Embracing the Tweet" in chapter 10. The author talks about how Twitter is so easy to use and allows its users to search whatever they want, whenever they want. The more I thought about how true that statement was, I kept thinking of ways to better my fraternity's Twitter profile. My fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi is an organization just like a business or company with a Twitter page. Our social media was a little out of date until the beginning of the semester, when we had one of our brothers go through all of our channels and update some information. One of our brothers is in charge of the social media channels right now, but after reading this book, there are some valuable tips that I could implement into our profiles. Those changes could make our image more appealing and give us more followers. In this article, it talks about the positives and negatives of social media for Greek Life. Recruitment is a vital part of the social media aspect for Greek organizations because the millennial generation is starting to become known for it's attachment to social media, and the best way to get in touch and connect with those potential new members is through social media. David Meerman Scott talks about how Twitter can sometime make an organization/business's image look sleazy if the post seems to have too much hype. Twitter is more than an app. It is a useful tool that can help our businesses and improve our overall public relations with others around the globe.

That freaking song that got stuck in my head

In the reading for this weeks class, David Meerman Scott certainly made the first two chapters pretty easy to read. It was so easy to follow the story of Dave Carroll and his broken Taylor guitar. In fact, it was so easy that I still cannot get that stupid song out of my head. The books talks about how Dave Carroll  made an unremarkable public relations exhibit and he probably didn't even try. He was just making a statement about his discontent with United Airlines. The way that his song blatantly calls out United, one would figure that United would have responded with a little more urgency. Instead they leave Dave with no answers for nine months.

A question to raise to the reader: If you were Dave, would you have redacted differently? I can personally say that I would have done the same. I think that his creativity is probably much greater than mine, but I would've tried to use my platform as a singer and musician to make my message known to the public. Especially since United Airlines is a very popular airline and is a company that is used everyday around the globe, he had some serious guts to pull that off.