The Power And Culture Of "Likes"

PBS Frontline Presents “Generation Like” explores the evolving relationships between teens, social media, and corporate marketing. 
- via the Press release: "In Generation Like, an eye-opening follow-up to FRONTLINE’s 2001 documentary The Merchants of Cool, author Douglas Rushkoff returns to the world of youth culture to explore how the perennial teen quest for identity and connection has migrated to social media — and how big brands are increasingly co-opting young consumers’ digital presences. “Today’s teens don’t need to be chased down by corporations,” Rushkoff says. “They’re putting themselves online for anyone to see. They tell the world what they think is cool—starting with their own online profiles. Likes, follows, retweets, and favorites are the social currency of this generation.” And they’re a very real currency for marketers: instead of selling the product to the teenage audience, the idea is to get the teenage audience to sell the product to itself..."

How to Use Social Media in Public Relations

In last Tuesday's post I  left you with an explanation of what social media is and in todays post I bring up the topic of how to use social media in public relations.  
- Being a social media enthusiast (on Twitter since May 2007 at @FernandSalasNY) and an unwilling participant in the recent NY Post Page 6 Chopard senior publicist vs NYC celebrity media photographers social media fail  news item written by Emily Smith, it is ever more evident that in 2014 and beyond, all industries dealing with news media entities really do need to utilize the worldwide communication aspect of social media correctly as technology evolves.. Used properly  as a communication tool it can  create amazing awareness of a cause and broadcast a strong positive message or NOT!
   Social media is changing the way consumers interact with brands. It should not exist independently of the company's goals and plans for growth; instead, it should be embedded as part of those goals and plans. It's not enough to broadcast your message anymore, you need to be able to establish trust, your place in their day to day lives. How does your brand help and improve your consumer's world? What ways can your business contribute? Answering these questions are the first steps towards working out how you can use social media to achieve them. There are more opportunities than ever to build your brand, more ways to connect with people. You just need to work out where they are, what they need and how you can be there for them. .The more you can, the more you work towards establishing your place in your consumer's world.
   By integrating the social media campaign into the overall company strategy, creating engaging content and measuring ROI, even big businesses can navigate social media effectively
  In the video below Kelly Brady publicist and owner of Brandsway Creative PR explains the use of social media when it comes to public relations.

Video by:  Howcast - How to Use Social Media in PR | Public Relations
* Speaker: - Kelly Brady - @KellyBrady on Twitter or Instagram: KellyBradyPR

* Video sidenote:: Ms. Brady includes Klout as a social media channel which it is not, it is a social media influence tracker. 
["Klout.com is a social media content discovery tool and status update scheduler website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the "Klout Score", which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measures the size of a user's social media network and correlates the content created to measure how other users interact with that content. Klout launched in 2008. - Wikipedia "]

  Facebook, Pinterest, and Foursquare as Kelly mentions indeed are all social media channels with an ongoing audience engagement from their respective internet community being the key aspect. Left out of the video, we can also include the social media sites: Google+, Soundcloud, Instagram, and Youtube to the ever growing list.

The Social Media Revolution 2014

Welcome to the revolution! In 2014 and beyond, social media is here to stay and anyone can use it as leverage as an effective branding and social media marketing communication tool!...