A Look at Other Classmates Blogs

This week I am going to take a break from my usual focus on NBC News Publicity and take a look at some of my other classmate’s blogs. After our recent class lecture on how important social media and technology is becoming in the field of Public Relations, I decided that I wanted to evaluate some of my peers who have blogged on the importance of social media. Now although I’m sure many of my peers enrolled in PRR 332 have awesome blogs, I do not have time to read all of them and therefore will be evaluating two that I feel did a great job in discussing social media.

The first blog post I looked at was written by Sam Roman, who has decided to focus her blog on fashion PR tactics. I have always been interested in fashion, but I mean what girl isn’t? Therefore, I was very excited when I discovered this post was not only about fashion PR, but social media as well. It basically discussed how the clothing retailer Anne Taylor LOFT launched an ad campaign on silk cargo pants; however the ad only featured models that are a size two which made many consumers bitter. In response to the negative feedback consumers were posting on Facebook about the ad, Anne Taylor LOFT quickly posted pictures of their very own office workers in the cargo pants in order to show consumers that women of any size could wear them and look great. I thought this was such an amazing usage of social media because the whole consumer/store feedback was done through technology. Basically, Anne Taylor LOFT was able to discover there was a problem and fix it in under twenty four hours, which would have NEVER been possible ten years ago.

The next classmate I evaluated was Amy Hardman and her blog on social media. The title of the post that really caught my eye was,“Always be open, honest and direct! - Social Media Ethics.” Here Amy discusses that because social media is so new, there is not really one specific person or company that is laying down the lines of what is right and what is wrong. Although there are many companies, like the previously explained Anne Taylor LOFT, who has used social media in a positive light there are also many who do not. Yet the title of Amy’s blog says it all, just be open, honest and direct! As you can previously see in Sam’s blog post, that is exactly what Ann Taylor LOFT did. They saw a problem and they were then honest and direct in providing an answer for consumers. There was no need for them to try to tie in deception, because if they did I highly doubt they would have gotten such positive publicity!

With social media being so new to our society, it is important to start taking advantage of the amazing and FREE opportunities it has to offer. Although when dealing with anything new problems often arose, it is the way a company handles these problems that matters. Therefore, having honest, open and clear communication via social media is avoiding the shady line ethics creates, which no company wants to cross. We must keep in mind that as fast as good news travel through social media so does bad news. This is why establishing a bad reputation through social media is not using these new technologies to an advantage. Well I hope you enjoyed my peer’s blog posts on social media and have learned a thing or two. I will be back next week with a bright, new fresh post.