Last Saturday, September 20, our class had a special lecture on social media. This was handled by Mr. Gian Paolo Pangan. He talked about plenty of things regarding how Web 2.0 and the social network sites have brought upon a change to the Philippine society.
Yehey!, as we all know, is a Philippine version of Yahoo! It provides Filipinos with a contextual indexing of items. From being a website, Yehey! has transformed itself into an online marketing firm. Since then, Yehey! has been helping companies achieve good reputation, and market potential from the public. They have improved brands such as Tide, Boy Bawang, Goldilocks, and many others. They have also helped politicians to be present online. Politicians such as Mar Roxas, and Manny Villar are just a few of those whom they have helped.
While discussing, he mentioned three important steps in doing an online marketing plan.
1. Create buzz – creating a buzz over the internet is either easy or hard, depending on the topic. If you’re trying to make a buzz that isn’t even buzz worthy, then don’t try to make such a buzz at all. If you think your ideas got potential, share it over internet forums, make a video about it, engage people into reacting to your idea, and wherever you think your audience broods. If it is interesting, people would surely go there. I don’t believe that making multiple accounts and talking to yourself would be a legit “buzz.” A buzz must have complete strangers involved.
2. Generate hype – hype is something that is generated when people are continuously talking about a certain topic. As communicologists, it is a challenge for us to create that “honest” hype. How do we do it? Let us take note of what our idea is all about and how it can make a change for society, then we would know how to make that hype. Hype could also be attributed to the skill of the communicologist to be consistent in giving regular updates to the customers/people regarding the organization’s idea/product/service.
3. Craft strategy – again, strategy is essential. Strategies are specific, objective, and rational. A good online marketing/advertising plan would have a specific target audience, no matter how explosive a plan may be to the other demographics. The plan should also lay out the objectives one by one, and how these objectives are to be measured later on after the execution of the plan.
Some facts regarding Philippine online activity according to mr. Pangan:
1. 28,000,000 – number of internet users
2. 83% – those having social networks
3. 86.4% – have uploaded photos
4. 98.6% – have watched an online video
5. 90% – have read a blog
Based on the data, we can say that Filipino online users are rapidly spreading out the word to everyone. It won’t be a matter of time before we will be named as the “social networking capital of the world.”
This is 2009. Everyone whose daily life is spent 20% of the time surfing, updating their profiles, and watching videos online probably knows what web 2.0 means. The generation came suddenly and pervasively, same as how technologies came upon Web 2.0. The speed and convergence by which people now interact also forced companies to act out proactively. Big companies now have high value for the people online, primarilly because major controversies, rumors, praises, opinions, and other organizational reaction come from this group. The people online constitute what I call public 2.0. Because of this, it is inevitable that PR practitioners also go to the web, but their real-life practice of PR is not anymore working efficiently for their organizations. They must adapt as fast as the bandwidth upgrades once to thwice a year (Philippines’ excempted from this of course).
These are some of the new rules of PR for all of us. I picked the top five from the bounty that our lecturer gave us.
You are what you publish. PR practitioners are not representatives, but individual advocates of their organizations. Their positions are now covered with usernames that make them only a part of the web, not superior corporate citizens.
Participation, not propaganda. Public 2.0 is a very participative and reactive demographic. PR practioners could get to know more about them by actually immersing themselves into that public. Call it phenomonologcial.
Lines between PR and marketing is now blurred. This raises the challenge for PR practitioners because not only must they be able to communicate effectively with the public to raise reputation and image, but also know how to market their product/service. They must know that people only react online when they are interested with something that they’re seeing; therefore, there must come some marketing strategy to seal the deal.
Spam is coutnerproductive. Spams are like the billboards in Guadalupe. They’re nice to see, but you’d rather see more of the beautiful river down the bridge during sunset than Willie Revillame, with three girls, proclaiming his chick-trapping man-scent. PR practitioners should know that Public 2.0 is further divided into subcultures, and they mus be able to target those subcultures that they deem important for the organization.
Public 2.0 looks for benefits, critically. As technology becomes better, so are people’s rationalizing powers getting sharper. Public 2.0 doesn’t get fooled that easily nowadays, and that is a great thing. PR professionals, in turn, must be able to assert the personal benefits and social relevance of what product/service they are pitching over the net.
These days, it’s hard for people with online capabilities not go online. Not only must organizations observe this phenomenon, but also react to it. Same with organizations, PR practitioners should realize the great potential that web 2.0 offers for businesses and society.
Last summer, I had my internship at one of the biggest corporations in the world. I must say that I really had fun learning what it’s like to be out of the house for 14 hours. I saw a lot of things, lots of buildings, lots of people, and lots of attitude. The company I worked with is much like a crab and egg plus corn soup, with a bit of cabbage and tomato. having different kinds of ingredients makes the experience worth having. Come to think about it, these variety of relationships that people create, maintain, and destroy reflect even our internet activities, but however the confusion and mixtures made, the internet still makes up a pretty good whole. That is what I think wiki stands for.
Corporate wikis are basically a collection of what people know regarding a topic, much like ingredients that has been from many places. The only thing that differs between cooking soup and creating a wiki is that in wikis, intrusion is highly acceptable and recognized. Wikis have this advantage over other web applications that makes it stand out and be as profitable as the hunderd million Wikipedia. Corporations , on the other hand, see wikis not for its profit-over-the-night solution, but for its functionality and business strategy. In my internship, my supervisor asked me to join with her in creating a wiki site for the company. Though I must say that I didn’t find the wiki to be a full wiki because of administration moderation over the contents passed, it was still a giant leap for my supervisor to think of ways to let her colleagues try to find their place in the company through idea contributions. In comparison with soup, contribution from different farmers and animal raisers is a must for a person to have a wonderful mix of soup.
Much like the soup, wikis are as are collection of some things. In corporations, wikis are a collection of ideas, ideas that neither good nor bad, just plain raw materials. If we put all those ideas together, much like mixing them up on a heated pan, those ideas start to smell good and turn to something delicious. Many companies are now experimenting with wikis. Nokia, Citigroup, Pixar, and LA Times are four of the many companies that test the waters of wikis.
Common Rules of Wiki Etiquette….
These do’s and don’ts were lectured to us by sir Barrientos, and can be found here.
The Do’s:
- Be bold – if you know you’re right about a certain topic in a misinformed wiki page, do improve it! That’s how organizations improve through initiative.
- Make notes – make sure you have your reasons why you changed something or else your fellow employees will get mad at you.
- Give praise – a praise doesn’t mean that that person is an ass-kisser. It only means that a useful contribution deserves respect.
- Build structure – structure doesn’t mean a person needs to create content. The person may be an editor only and be part of the structure as well.
- Be polite – being the opposite of rude, it may be just the line between getting a promotion from editing your boss’s contribution and a resignation which you don’t even want.
The Dont’s:
- Take it personally – it’s all business after all, and bet the day will come when another would feel the same with you.
- Ignore questions – inquiries are the first step to development, so don’t dodge them.
- Delete useful content – someone with evil motives would surely be the only one who would do this.
- Be chatty – sticking to the essence of wiki is the key, and the essence is: information for all. It’s not even close to chatting personally in wikis.
- Keep it secret – an idea is like a genie. It needs to be released from its lamp.
Nibotech entirely revolves around the happenings inside social media and the people that build and rebuild it. Special interest is given to technological advancements in communication.
