It’s not astonishing to know that most of us found out about Osama’s demise from a social media site instead of some major news source. Atleast I got to know about this through Twitter. I was surprised because five minutes prior to going online I was watching T.V and even flipped news channels but nothing of this sort caught my attention.
Even Foursquare users had their own party and to celebrate their joy people began to check in to a world where Osama Bin Laden no longer exists. So many check in sites were created all over the globe, all related to an Osama free zone. The most popular venue people were checking in was Osama Bin Ladens Dead Party.
Through every social medium in one way or other people celebrated the death of Osama. And we have to admit that in todays digital age Social media sites have become themain source of breaking newsfor most people and for others a place to share their joy over such news. Now we don’t have to wait for news channels to inform us rather now social media can inform journalists of what exactly happened. And a great example of this is the story of 33 year old Sohaib Attar, Twitter user@ ReallyVirtual who unknowingly tweeted live on twitter the assault on Osama Bin Laden pleasure palace in Abbotabad,as the whole event was happening.
Sohaib was initially irritated by the large noise of a helicopter hovering above the area and then he started tweeting about it live. He recently Tweeted, "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who live blogged the Osama raid without knowing it.".After his tweeting about the event, he has become a big online celebrity and he is even getting marriage proposals on Twiiter.
As a part of my digital media module, I had to connect my blog with a Google Analytics account and talk about it. Though before starting this module I was not even aware of what all Google can do for us.
Google Analytics is a tool that collects statistics of visitors ,visiting a particular website. According toWikipedia, GA is the most widely used website statistics service with 57 percent of the 10 000 most popular websites currently using it.
I used Google analytics to track my followers and doing that so was so much fun. I have to admit that every time I used to check blog statistics there was a smile on my face. It was very easy and exciting to find out from this tool that were people actually reading my blog posts or were just checking them out.
My Google Analytics account states that I have had 176 visitors since I started my account in March and 243 page view since I started blogging. The average time spent on page was 4 minutes 15 seconds that clearly indicates that my blog was read and not just flipped. I had visitors in my account from 7 different countries i.e. India , United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, United States , Russia and Australia. I had my maximum visitors from U.K and India. Most of the visitors used referral sites to visit my blogs and one 3% used search engines to visit my blog.
As a PR student I believe that Google Analytics can prove to be a very helpful tool when doing a campaign with social media websites. It can helps us in getting the answers of who, when, why ,from where and how visited the websites which can then provide a better understanding of the campaign direction. This tool helps you measure the people who visited the website and also gives an insight about how people landed up to you website. I believe this kind of a tool is also very useful in measuring ROI after launching a PR campaign.
Over all for me using Google analytics was a wonderful experience and hopefully I will use it in my future for professional purposes also.
Internet has given various tools to public relations practitioners for effective communication with their organizations, internal and external publics, media and other stakeholders. These tools include emails, blogs, websites, social networks, search engines and many others .One tool which is still not explored and majorly used for external communication purposes is Wikis.
AWikiis awebsite that allows the creation and editing of any number ofinterlinkedweb pagesvia aweb browserusing a simplifiedmarkup language or aWYSIWYG text editor. It differs from a traditional website because the content is user created and dynamic. This type of website allows any user to create and edit pages from the browser. Users can even edit the existing entries, add new entries, and even create new pages. . All of this occurs in an observable manner with all changes being logged and publicly viewable. The most visited wiki is the user-created encyclopa , Wikipedia .Wikis change the role of the website user. From just passive viewers of a document they become the potential creators, contributors, and editors.
The potential for wikis in public relations is great. This form of website meets the requirements for dialogic communication in a way that other Internet tools are unable to. In terms of relationship creations, management and enhancement, wikis are an ideal form of Internet communication. . A wiki can be used to suit your project, as it will reduce the time of having meetings , even the changes made to the wiki can be tracked by ‘watching’ – receiving email notifications when someone changes something, you can also upload documents, photos, videos etc.
Even for the purposes of research and development for a PR campaign wikis are of a great help. Wikis are used internally do gain knowledge from organization’s internal stakeholders in order to get better understanding of their perceptions, or externally in order to gain feedback from the public. This information can be valuable for several reasons as it will promote interactivity, stakeholder relations.
Wikis can be seen as a tool for applying Grunig’s principle of two-way-symmetrical communication where all users have an equal opportunity to make a contribution to the content which is communicated i.e. they have an option to provide their feedback. Wikis are of best use when formulating a joint piece of work or organizing an event where often plentiful copies of work are edited and are lost in the process of email – but a wiki allows for a single editable copy.
So the use of Wikis is huge for internal communication from a public relations perspective but for external communication, it is still limited because companies are afraid of vandalism. What if someone writes negative comments or expresses anger on the wiki page of organization ,the whole image and reputation will be soiled in few hours. Because it is very difficult for PR practitioners to re edit the wrong information on organizations wiki page especially now when Wikipedia is available in more than 100 active language editions it will be really hard for PR practitioners to know what has been edited in which language edition.
So in my Opinion I think If a company uses a Wiki for external communication. Then it is very important that they have someone in charge who whole-solely looks after it and keeps an eye on content which is added by people outside the organization.
Here is a video explaining How wikis can be used in an organization.
