Social Media Ball
01/2010




Whenever the world of PR stumbles upon new tools of communication, corporate professionals need to answer one fundamental question: should they seize the day and be early adopters, or bide their time in the wings, waiting to see how the new techniques evolve once the dust of hype has settled? For the past couple of years, this conundrum could be applied to a multitude of social media novelties. Should your company run its own Twitter account? Should it take the plunge and engage with Facebook? Should it create its own internal social network for employees to speak openly? There are sound reasons for corporations to exercise caution. Jumping on the bandwagon without prior reflection is, without a doubt, a slippery slope to failure, for involvement with social media is not without its risks. Could employees misinterpret freedom of speech and abuse the internal forum? Could there be an increase in leaks to unscrupulous journalists? Communications specialists could also get it wrong, and swamping social networks with aimless self-promotion will hardly endear you to your stakeholders. On the plus side, social media offers a unique opportunity to engage with stakeholders on a more spontaneous and intimate level than has ever been possible, building an organisation’s image and discovering trends and potential sources of crisis long before they materialise in more traditional channels. In this issue’s Story Teller section, a diverse range of experts from the academic and corporate worlds guide us through the distracting white noise of hyperbole and explore the ramifications of social media on PR and corporate communications. We hope you find some food for thought in this first issue of 2010.

Marc-Oliver Voigt
Editor-in-Chief
m.voigt@communication-director.eu