8.3 The impact of social media

The rise of social media has had significant effects on society and communication professionals who write with purpose. Marketers use social media to enhance traditional efforts such as direct mail fliers and television advertisements. Social media also enable marketers to create interactive content for audiences. In the public relations field, social media give professionals easier access to journalists and news media outlets. For example, it is common for public relations professionals to reach out to reporters via Twitter.

In many ways, social media have made it easier for consumers to hold organizations, public figures, and large institutions accountable (Green, 2012), which is a good thing. Users can easily find and reveal information about a previous event involving an organization or individual, whether it was advantageous or damaging to the brand or the person’s reputation. Users can also provide instant public feedback by voicing their opinions via social media networks. Furthermore, social media have made it challenging for many organizations to control their brand and present a consistent message across platforms. Audiences can also generate information that can be damaging to a brand’s reputation. Take a look at this video from Sherry Lloyd, social media and marketing manager for Vineyard Columbus, who discusses brand management and the challenges of controlling a company’s identity in the social media age.

Many campaigns effectively use social media to produce beneficial effects. For example, Bell’s Let’s Talk campaign is a multi-year, multimedia campaign that bills itself as “the world’s biggest conversation about mental health,” with a goal of raising awareness and de-stigmatizing mental health issues. Since its start in 2011, the campaign claims to have generated over a billion interactions while raising millions of dollars in donations to support mental health-facing non-profit organizations and support services in Canada. Using the hashtag #BellLetsTalk the company’s initiative has successfully become a major convenor of mental health discussions, with social media influencers like the Duchess and Duke of Sussex (Meghan and Harry) sharing posts as part of the campaign. To help incentivize the sharing of its content, the campaign links sharing, starting discussions and watching short educational videos on the topic, to donations (e.g. every view of a video results in a small donation to mental health organizations). The company has also created online and offline supporter toolkits for people to share their stories online with friends and family using graphics, stickers, and discussion guides to have healthy conversations about mental health.

To be sure, this campaign has enhanced Bell’s reputation and increased brand awareness among consumers, but it has also made a significant impact. This example demonstrates the powerful utility of using social media to create reputation and relationship management campaigns for a good cause.