Mobile technology within the public relations industry

Introduction

During the renowned Mobile World Congress in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked the audience to think “mobile first” (PR Week, 2010). This is surely a strong inclination for where the public relations (PR) industry must head.

Mobile phone uptake has increased at such a rapid pace that the penetration of cellular phones has now overtaken that of landline telephones and even exceeds the level of televisions. But why is this? What makes mobile phones so popular and why have we become so attached to them? More importantly, how can PR professionals use them to meet objectives?

I’m not going to bore you with tedious discussion about the history of mobile phones and countless stages that it has been through. Instead, I have selected a fantastic video clip which illustrates the growth of mobile technology with some rather mindboggling statistics.



Mobile telephones are becoming more and more a part of people’s everyday life, a necessity to have with us at all times. I myself encounter a feeling of emptiness when I don’t have my phone with me, especially when alone. This is because a phone is a very personal item, one that holds great attachment to its owner. In contrast, when I have my phone with me, there is a sense of comfort because all my friends and family are at the touch of a button. Isn’t that magic?

There are now over 5 billion mobile phone connections globally (BBC, 2010). That is approximately 71 per cent of the world’s population. Not only is this staggering, it also presents the PR industry with a wealth of opportunity, governed by mass consumption.

Mobile communications within PR campaigns

As last weeks lecture discussed, the Internet has made PR campaigns more interactive. Mobile phones on the other hand have the potential to make campaigns more direct, through mobile websites, RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and blogs.

The rise of mobile Internet, stimulated by the omnipresence of devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry, is drastically affecting the way people access information and communicate. Thanks to smart-phones we now live in a ‘hyper communications environment’ where we are constantly in touch with one another through a range of different media platforms. Mobiles are always switched on and users carry them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thus, ‘always on’ media, offers more opportunities for communication when other methods are not available (Balasubramanian, Peterson, and Jarvenpaa 2002). However, as mentioned earlier, the mobile phone is a personal tool. Therefore, PR practitioners must be careful not to include tactics which are seen to be invasive. From my own perspective, I know how irritating it is to receive text messages from organisations in the form of advertisement. Nonetheless, mobile Internet has presented the PR industry with a goldmine of opportunity.

607.5 million mobile users will be using social networks by 2013 (Maxwell, 2010) which means that PR practitioners will have to start making their online campaigns mobile friendly. Content aimed at mobile devices should be customised to the correct specifications to allow for easy access and use. This can be achieved in a number of ways:

- Purchase a .mobi domain name and create a mobile website to launch your PR campaigns from.
- Develop Apps for smartphones.
- Launch a mobile website blog using text messaging (SMS) to directly interact via your site.
- Conduct surveys to gain insight into market trends and important customer opinion. Websites such as surveymonkey.com are compatible with mobile and feed nicely onto social media sites such as Twitter.
- Incorporate messages onto social media sites to keep consumers informed and interacted.
- RSS feeds.

Journalists and their mobile

Journalists are accessing content such as press releases from their phones, whilst on the way home or to a lunch meeting. Therefore, “PROs need to change the way they write releases. They must be shorter, with bullet points rather than long descriptions” (PR Week, 2010). How are PR practitioners supposed to inject flare, charisma and fluency into bullet pointed information? Moreover, press releases serve to provide reporters with a rounded, almost complete story, one that is already ‘framed’ and ready for publish. Remember it is said that around 70 per cent of news articles are originated from press releases! This certainly poses a challenge, and one that needs to be addressed and re-thought purposefully. If PR professionals begin losing their influence over client information it will be a serious problem for the practice.

On the other hand, according to a survey by PR Week, 71 per cent said mobile communications had made PROs more responsive to their needs (2010). For example, picture yourself at a big opening for client A, and you get a call from client B who tells you one of its products is being recalled. They demand that you stop the media from running anything about the recall until all communication points are written and approved. Imagine the consequences if you weren’t able to send emails from your mobile device? PR demands constant connectivity and mobile phones support this requirement (in particular smart-phones).

Foursquare for PR

The geo-based mobile application Foursquare is one that stands out as an obvious PR tool, due to its conversational nature. Most suited to events, restaurants and bars, it can be used to reach numerous objectives. For example, Foursquare is great for identifying and in turn rewarding brand loyalists with discounts and freebees. Starbucks are implementing this strategy by offering ‘mayors’ a $1 discount on a Frapucciono. We can describe this as a system of give and take. The customer receives benefits in the form of discount whereas Starbucks gain exposure in the form of brand awareness. When a user ‘checks in’ they reveal their location to friends either on Foursquare or through Facebook and Twitter. Ultimately, ‘checking in’ or posting a review on Foursquare is an online form of peer recommendation. Thus, it is a great way to connect with a target audience or even reach new consumers (Olson, 2010). In addition, Foursquare has the ability to gain direct customer feedback on products and service through its ‘tips’ option. Therefore, it can be incorporated into listening strategies (Bakshi, 2010) in gaining concise, to the point and instantaneous information.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the popularity of mobile phones and especially smart-phones is increasing by the day. By 2014, mobile Internet should take over desktop Internet usage (Mashable, 2010). Thus, the way people excavate information and communicate is changing, and the PR industry must follow suit. PR practitioners must recognise the great potential of mobile phones and incorporate them into their traditional PR campaign strategies to achieve maximum outcome. Simply, it is time for PR to get mobilized.

Exploring the "digital divide": Mobile adoption across the developing world

Adoption of mobile phones has accelerated globally during the current decade, but has the “digital divide” been lessening as a result? Researchers are desperate to discover ways in which mobile technology can stimulate economic activity in poorer countries, creating a better standard of living. Hence, this post will firstly, analyse the "digital divide" and secondly, identify how mobile phones are being used to great effect across the world.

The emphatic “dot-com bubble” spanning between 1995 to 2000 created a revolution as well as a worrying proposition. As people in the rich world embraced new computing and communications technologies, people in the poor world became stranded on the wrong side of the “digital divide” (The Economist-Technology, 2005) (see figure 1). Goggin (2006) notes that low-income countries have little more than 4 per cent mobile penetration in comparison to higher income countries which are nearing 77 per cent.

Figure 1:

In response, the United Nations launched a “Digital Solidarity Fund” (DCS, 2008) in 2005 to fund projects that address “the uneven distribution and use of new information and communication technologies” and “enable excluded people and countries to enter the new era of the information society” (The Economist-Technology, 2005).

However, the “digital divide” has often been questioned as a myth brought about by a misunderstanding. Plugging poor countries into the Internet will not help them create economic growth because the “digital divide” is not a problem in itself; it is a derivative of other divides such as income, literacy and development (The Economist-Technology, 2005). These symptoms are at the heart of the problem and thus, need to be tackled with integrity.

This leads us nicely onto mobile telephony and it’s rapid expansion across the world. It is this form of technology that holds the potential to drive development in poorer countries both economically and socially (Peterson and Malhotra, 1997). Mobile phones do not rely on a permanent electricity supply and can be used by people who cannot read or write. Therefore, mobiles are very well suited to people living in poor environments.

Across the world, mobile phones are becoming increasingly used as a payment method. For example, the local Coca Cola distributor in Zambia’s capital city pays for a shipment using his mobile phone. A full load costs 10m Kwacha (about $2,000) and in cash, this is a difficult amount to get hold of and takes time to count. Moreover, this sum is ten times the average wage and therefore, a temptation to thieves (The Economist-Economics Focus, 2005). All it takes is a text message to the driver and a receipt is issued.

This is just one of the dynamic ways in which poorer countries are using mobile phones to progress. Fishermen and farmers can check prices at different markets before selling produce, people can look for jobs more effectively and wasted journeys can be prevented. We have to remember that travel is expensive and extremely time consuming. A quick phone call can be the difference from a trip that would normally take a day to one that takes an hour. It is said that in a typical developing country, an increase of ten mobile phones per 100 people boosts GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points (The Economist-Economics Focus, 2005).

In conclusion, mobile holds the potential for developing nations to leapfrog technologically since they are able to bypass the development of landline telephone systems (Stump et al, 2008). It also holds the potential for creating economic benefits thus, restricting the “digital divide”. Yes the divide is still a significant problem, but with projects such as the “Digital Solidarity Fund” there is evidence that mobile technology has the ability to improve living standards for the poor and in turn, tighten the digital gap. As we speak, mobile phones are the world’s most widely distributed computers (The Economist, 2011). Even in poor countries about two-thirds of people have access to one (see figure 2).

Figure 2:

What interactivity means for the communications practice

The introduction of Web 2.0 has made the Internet more interactive, but what does this mean for the communications industry? How can interactivity be used to achieve objectives and goals? What is the formula for something to be classed as interactive? These are the questions I seek to answer throughout this blog post.

Background

Inside the digital world, interactivity can be found within mediated communications settings across a number of different platforms, channels and contexts. This is a radical transition from its origins of face-to-face conversation. Social interaction, and hence interactivity can be described as the geometric spiral metaphor for communication: Everyone is familiar with it (Rafaeli, 1988).

Research on public relations (PR) and the Internet has stated that interactivity between the public and the organisation is an issue of high relevance. Interactivity is one of the main characteristics of the Internet, and has been the subject of a number of studies in the field of communications (Capriotii, 2006).

Interactivity explained

In order to fully understand what interactivity is, we shall look at Rafaeli’s study in 1998. He describes interactivity as part of a responsiveness model and states that communication is not fully interactive unless specific criteria are met.

Interactivity is quintessentially a communication concept which comes in three different forms (Rafaeli, 1988). The distinction called for is between interactive, quasi-interactive (reactive), and non-interactive communication sequences. Quasi- and fully interactive sequences differ clearly from non-interactive as they offer two-way communication as opposed to one-way. The complete absence of interaction is marked by jolting, incoherent conversation (McLaughlin, 1984).

The difference between quasi- and full interactivity lies in the nature of the communication responses (Rafaeli, 1988). Interactivity requires that communicants respond to each other. The conditions for full interactivity are achieved when later stages in a message sequence depend on the reaction to earlier transactions, as well as on the content exchanged (Rafaeli, 1988). During a press conference, a journalist might say to a member of parliament “It is clear you do not agree with the public sector cuts, but do you believe there is room for compromise?” If an open response is delivered from this question, it is deemed fully interactive. A situation or medium remains quasi-interactive when previous interactions are unacknowledged. Quasi-interactivity is none the less a very important form of communication, especially when online.

Interactive content

Numerous organisations are using creative and interactive material to engage users and offer a more active and participatory experience, where both parties are contributing equally and with the aim to build relationships. Starbucks have used interactivity to great effect within their Web site statbuckscoffeeathome.com. A user can discover the coffee taste he/she is most suited to by taking a simple ‘Find My Perfect Coffee Quiz’(see figure 1). A user can view the different types of coffee available by moving the cursor over the coffee packets as shown in the image and ultimately discover which is their ideal coffee.

Figure 1:

The Internet enhancing democracy

The Internet is mainly about the exchange of information, and so is PR. Ordinary people are interacting with each other and a whole range of institutions 24 hours a day, but to what extent? The Office of National Statistics reported in 2010 that 73 per cent of households had Internet access and 30.1 million adults used the Internet every day or nearly every day, almost double the estimate in 2006 (see figure 2).

Figure 2:

We can say the Internet is creating its own society, one that has the potential to be exceedingly democratic. It offers public discourse to mass audiences and small groups across many cultures. Ideally, new media will facilitate public discourse that is free from what Habermas calls the imperatives of the systems world, i.e. money and power (Habermas, 1981 cited Shultz, 2000).

The Internet is revolutionising the ways in which companies do business with their customers, pushing the idea of markets as conversations and how the Internet unlocks the ability for businesses to engage in a new and instantaneous manner (Bright, 2010).

Friedland (1996 cited Shultz, 2000) suggested that the Internet gives people a fine tool for ‘electronic public journalism’ that is independent from professional media organisations, resulting in a more democratic system. This can reduce complexity of content, help users make judgements about what is important, and build shared beliefs. tripadvisor.com is a fantastic example of how an online citizenry can create credible opinion, and one that has the ability to significantly influence others. People are now saying that the percentage rating of a hotel on tripadvisor.com is more accurate than its ‘star ranking’.

However, the achievement of democratic consensus is related to opinions that are not merely announced but also discussed openly and free from distortions/gatekeepers (Shultz, 2000).

Web 2.0 provides space for this form of interactivity. Hacker states: “the more democratic a communication system, the more it will accommodate interactivity over mere connectivity” (1996 cited Shultz, 2000). Hence, we can say Web 2.0 holds the potential for what Habermas describes as the ideal speech situation (Gonzales, 1989 cited Shultz, 2000). For details on these criteria see Wikipedia.

Interactive journalism

Web 2.0 has changed the way journalists publish articles online. Readers are able to comment on news stories and interact with professional journalists. Internet sites of well-established media (e.g. the Economist) can play a decisive role as forums of valid information and serious debate, because they fall back on professional editors.

However, the problem of professional mass media going online is that their economic strategies often do not coverage with such a plan. Instead, their interest is to keep a tight rein on the advertising market (Shultz, 2000). Newspapers such as The Times have begun adding pay walls (see figure 3) to their Web site’s in order to fund online projects as well as the fight against free news service. This provides journalists with more time to monitor online articles and respond to reader comments creating more of a participatory, dialogic discussion.

Figure 3:

Conclusion

From my research, I believe online interactivity plays a significant role in aiding user satisfaction. As demonstrated throughout this blog entry, there are many ways in which interactivity can help create positive outcomes such as public discourse and equality of opinion. Engaging users online by making them feel apart of something is a great way to cultivate new relationships and provide a more interesting online experience. PR practitioners can use interactivity to formulate feedback response on their clients' products and services.

As always I will leave you with a question that is sure to make your brain tingle. At what point does interactivity become irritating?

Nokia partners with Microsoft in hope of revival

The world's largest phone manufacturer, Nokia, has given up on creating its own smartphone software in order to challenge Apple and Google. The Finnish mobile giant has made bold move by teaming up with Microsoft's Windows Phone as part of a new venture and major shake-up in Nokia's 145-year history.

The deal aims to form a "broad strategic alliance" to challenge Apple's iPhone and Google's Android operating system. The announcement of the partnership has come only a day after Mr Elop (Nokia's Chief Executive) warned that Nokia risked being engulfed by "burning flames" unless it underwent "radical change" (Daily Telegraph, 2011).

Mr Elop's memo to staff was brutally frank and to the point. He described Nokia as a company in crisis and said how the firm is yet to even provide a product that matches the first i-Phone. "The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience". He added, "Android came on the scene just over two years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable."

However, the leaked statement has been deemed by analysts and bloggers as a clever piece of Public Relations (PR), which oozes honesty and realism. Elop has demonstrated to the media as well as shareholders that he means serious business, and that the mobile market is now a "three horse race" (Fierce Mobile Content, 2011).

I shall leave you with a short YouTube clip that gives a concise video summary of the news story.

Analysing blogs within the public relations industry

As our task is to write a blog on a weekly basis, I thought it would be fitting to examine the use of blogs within the public relations (PR) profession. Although there is little academic research on this subject, I have gathered as much credible content as possible. Away we go then …

Key facts and figures

·       It is known that the term “weblog” was created by Jorn Barger in 1997 arising from the   amalgamation of two words “web” and “log” (Kaiser et al., 2007).
·       1999: The year that the free blogging platform Blogger was launched, which then went on to be bought buy Google in 2003.
·       More than 14 million people worldwide keep a personal diary on the Internet and a further 100 million (one third of the active Web universe) read blogs habitually (Gordillo, 2007, cited Xifra and Huertas, 2008).
·       Ninety per cent of blogs are interactive (Lenhart, 2006, cited Kent, 2007).
·       Blogs promote the notion of “thinking by writing”
(Nardi et al., 2004, p. 45).
·       Hundreds of blogs are weeks ahead of the mainstream media when reporting stories in their own industry/profession.
·       153 million+: Is the estimated number of blogs identified as of January 11, 2011 (BlogPulse).

Introduction

The traditional role of media gatekeepers is experiencing drastic change (Pavlik, 2008) in the age of consumer-generated content.

Interactive blogs and other forms of social media were derived from the introduction of Web 2.0, described by Phillips and Young (2009, p. 12) as a space for symmetrical communication: a platform that aids the transfer of knowledge and conversations and a place where people can easily mix and match both. Hence, blogs provide organisations with an effective environment in which to create dialogue and communicate directly with publics and stakeholders, without the mediation of traditional gatekeepers. Therefore, they allow users, clients, opponents and competitors to communicate freely with each other, with the potential to create a discourse that is largely outside the control of the subject (Phillips and Young, 2009, p. 7).

Blog characteristics

On the one hand, blogs enable professionals to analyse the online market and ascertain the opinions of their audience in order to measure public perception of a business, product or service. On the other, they are a major technique for organisations to actively participate in symmetrical communication, either by posting comments on other blogs or creating one’s own (Xifra and Huertas, 2008).  

Figure 1 - Key elements of blogs (Baxter et al., 2010).

Conversation is key

It is the “conversational nature” (Lee et al., 2008, cited Baxter et al., 2010) of blogs that makes them appealing for individual’s to exchange views and opinions about issues of mutual interest.

Blogs employ threaded dialogue, creating an environment where individuals, groups, and organisations can interact. Therefore, blogs facilitate ‘dialogic relationships’ between users (Kent and Taylor, 1998). This exists when all parties involved in the communication process are contributing equally and with the aim to build relationships. Furthermore, dialogic communication requires open pubic discourse and a commitment from PR practitioners to place a high value on public opinion (Kent and Taylor, 1998).

Surfing the ‘blogosphere’

Blogs are useful for research, issue monitoring, and environmental scanning. When unanticipated issues, legislation, or events emerge, organisations can search through the archives of blogs for information, reader sentiment, links to other useful information, and so on, just as an organisation might examine relevant scholarly information, conduct interviews or search other archives and databases for information (Kent, 2005).

Monitoring blogs can be one way of coming to understand the world-view of diverse individuals and publics. Organisations are able to discover how people are interpreting and responding to organisational events, messages, and activities before such information reaches the mainstream media and news outlets. This means PR professionals can formulate better, more compelling responses.

There are software applications called ‘aggregators’ that will automatically gather data from blogs and other Web sites. Aggregators are very easy to use and anyone who can use e-mail can figure out how to use one.

Many blogs are produced using “Really Simple Syndication” (RSS) feeds. RSS uses a programming language called XML to convert Web content into an easily viewed text-based format. Aggregators collect RSS feeds so that content can be read more efficiently.  The principle of RSS is a lot like having a personalised newspaper, one that only provides content that you want to read. Using an RSS aggregator allows PR professionals to quickly sort through information from many media sites, organisations, and bloggers. Aggregators give professionals the ability to monitor what is being said by hundreds of sources, individuals, and publics on a minute-by-minute basis (Kent, 2007). Thus, aiding the crisis communications process to provide messages that are densely formulated and in turn, more effective.

Reputation is at stake

The ‘blogosphere’ is a force that needs to be paid close attention to by organisations. Bloggers can wreck havoc on reputations, like when Jeff Jarvis posted repeatedly on BuzzMachine about his faulty Dell laptop, known as the ‘Dell-Hell’ saga. On the other hand, they can create ‘the next big thing’ like when the immensely popular blog BoingBoing covered a product called “InstaSnow” leading to drastic increase in traffic and sales. 

Insta Snow - YouTube Video.



The ‘power of the people’ has become the ‘power of the bloggers’ (Spencer, 2004).

Influencing publics

The power of blogs stems from the network effect. When an expert blogger makes a point that has value to a wider audience, the word spreads (‘word of mouse’) and the topic can be significantly blogged about (Phillips and Young, 2009, p. 12). This has profound consequences for organisations and PR professionals.

Blogs bring homogenous groups of individuals and publics together. Thus, from a PR standpoint, blogs represent the ultimate in public segmentation: coherent groups of individuals/professionals who share a common interest.

Reaching the choir is useful when an organisation is trying to influence opinion leaders, innovators and early adopters (Rogers, 1995, cited Kent, 2007). Blogs offer organisations another route for sharing their positions in a somewhat controlled fashion and many mainstream businesses such as Nokia, Ford and HP have taken advantage of the medium (Kent, 2007).

Using blogs as a way to influence individuals and publics is one of the most frequently mentioned characteristics of blogs by PR practitioners (Edelman, 2005, cited Kent, 2007).  Allowing or encouraging visitors to an organisation’s Web site in order to participate in how online news is framed is possibly the greatest strength of blogs and the feature of the most importance to PR practitioners (Kent, 2007).

Blogs promote democracy

Hiebert (2004, cited Xifra and Huertas, 2008) believes that blogs foster democracy because they restore dialogue and participative communication in the public sphere, in turn, preserving the role of PR by means of two-way communication. Brown (2009) advocates, “We are seeing the democratisation of the means production, distribution and exchange”, through the rise in user-generated content, as social networks are transformed into vast public spaces and word of mouth drives influence. Web 2.0 has made our conversations increasingly digital.

Corporate blogs

As social media is about talking and not selling, blogs are a great way to include personality within a cold, corporate website.

Organisational blogs can be categorised into five different types: employee blogs; group blogs; executive blogs; promotional blogs and newsletter blogs (Lee et al., 2008, cited Baxter et al., 2010).

With Google and other search engine sites favouring sites that are regularly updated, blogs are very likely to boost a company’s presence in search rankings in a way that a traditional corporate website will not, and therefore the idea of a corporate blog can be very compelling. However, businesses are often nervous about naked conversations that take place in and around blogs and there have been cases where careless comments have hit a corporate share price.

A lot of companies are making the mistake that blogging is publishing. Blogging is two-way and crucially, it’s the audience that decides what’s read, what gets linked to and in turn, what is deemed successful. Therefore, it makes sense to listen to the conversations which target consumers are having and then shape a blog around them.

PR practitioners should never set up a blog in favour of a client by pretending to be someone unconnected with the organization (Brown, 2009). Apart from being unethical, this practice, along with posting comments and contributing to forums whilst cloaking your identity or not declaring an interest is often referred to as ‘astroturfing’. It is likely that you will get found out, leading to significant damage to a brand or organisation. It goes without saying that you should also avoid the more extreme version of this, known as ‘sock puppetry’, the practice of posting entries under several different false names to make something appear more popular than it is.

In 2005, part of the L’Oreal cosmetics empire produced a fake blog called ‘Journal de ma Peau’, to promote an anti-wrinkle product called Peel Microabrasion. It was a testimony of a woman called Claire, who had great experiences with the product and claimed it improved her skin. Claire had been invented by an advertising agency. The company received so many complaints in just two months it was forced to replace the made up Claire with real-life bloggers who described their genuine experiences. 

Blogger engagement

The social web provides us with tools for engaging with bloggers that were unavailable to us in our dealings with journalists. A good example of how we can do this is by using a micro-blog like Twitter to pitch our story (Brown, 2009). On the other hand, I believe that PR practitioners can also engage with bloggers in the same way they do with journalist contacts – by email and telephone and on the odd occasion by actually meeting. However, the most popular bloggers receive over 300 hundred emails a day from PR people and unless they are targeted, interesting and appropriate, they are more than likely going to be blocked forever.

Conclusion

This post identifies blogs as an essential part of any PR practitioner’s toolkit. They have numerous uses from monitoring ‘word of mouse’ to information sharing to influencing key publics. Their rapid and continuous rise in popularity means they are becoming increasingly more important within the PR industry and building relationships with expert bloggers is becoming critical, especially for digital agencies.

The power of the ‘bloggosphere’ is not to be underestimated and many organisations have learnt the hard way. Organisations shouldn’t be tempted to jump on the blog bandwagon before learning exactly how to use them and establishing what the goals and objectives for using them are.

Remember, do not blog for the sake of it, blog for a reason.

I will leave you with a question that is sure to get you thinking. At what point does an innovation (in this instance blogging) become an everyday business practice, such as the Internet or wireless telephones?