SOCIAL MEDIA: MARKETING PUBLIC RELATION’S NEW BEST FRIEND

The organizational long term success of promotional campaigns and the integration of marketing communications are affected by the effective use of information communication technologies, including the use of the Internet. Internet technology, as a source of communication, had become an important and exploring tool for marketers in the past. Today, the Internet implementation in the marketing process is inexpensive, delivers instant international reach, offers great real time feedback and reaches millions of people for whom the Web is the centre of virtually all communications. Although the term word-of-mouth marketing hasn’t really changed over the years, what has changed is the increased opportunities that companies have nowadays to foster it. Social media is a channel which is considered to be especially useful in enabling word-of-mouth between people, and especially because of its large number of users, word-of-mouth can now spread not only from one to one, but more like one to thousands, depending on how many ‘friends’ one has. This of course, may backfire since a dissatisfied customer may spread negative word-of-mouth to thousands of people, virtually overnight, with the company having little control over the content and dissemination of this. With social media on such a rise, some may say that traditional marketing practises as we know them are phasing out. However, it may also be assumed that they are not necessarily phasing out, but are rather ‘supported’ by a stronger sibling – that of social media. The aim of this research is to identify and discuss the growing popularity of social media and explore its potential impact on marketing practises and especially Marketing Public Relations.