Media in the Social Media Age Media Management - Business Plan Example

Running head: Media in the Social Media Age – Media Management Plan Proactive and Innovative Media Campaign Management for Series II of the US TV Reality Show ‘The Spin Crowd’ in the EMEA Region Insert Name Insert Grade Course Insert Tutor’s Name 15 March 2012 Proactive and Innovative Media Campaign Management for Series II of the US TV Reality Show ‘The Spin Crowd’ in the EMEA Region 1. Introduction Media is an instrument of communication which traditionally has included electronic and print. Social media on the other hand is a social instrument of communication that provides information and allows interaction with the user as well as among other users. Modern day platform for social media is the web network contained in the internet. User interaction in social media is in terms of feedback by commenting, sharing views, posing questions, and voting for quality and relevance of content, design and other attributes. Traditional electronic media includes Television and radio broadcasting while print media comprises of newspapers, Newsletters, bulletins, magazines among others (Brogan, 2010, p. 203). Social media can be said to constitute the following: • Social book marking where interaction is by tagging and searching through websites bookmarked by other people, • Social news where people vote for articles and make comments, discussions, and air views • Social networking – interaction here is by creating personal profiles, inviting and adding friends, preferential sharing personal information, creating groups and carrying out discussions. Examples here include Face book and Twitter social networks among others. • Blog spots including announcements blogger relationships and proprietary blogs – These are personal sites on the web created with an aim to give and share certain information and provide a platform for discussions, comments and ideas about the subject areas. • Wikis – Here, the users interact by way of adding and editing new and existing articles respectively for example, Wikipedia, wiki answers, and investopedia. • Paid earned owned internet advertising • Search marketing mobile advertising sponsorships • Paid applications social media (pages and feeds) • Word of mouth user forums news • Brand and product websites • Mobile brand and product websites • Proprietary mobile applications • Customer care services • Proprietary digital content 1.1 The Place of Public Relations Agencies in Media Campaign Management PR agencies have traditionally been useful in developing relationships with editorial contacts and creating editorial content that can be published by these contacts meaning that PR has always been about the management and optimization of mutually influential relationships. Successful social media marketing is dependent on two main inputs; the media content and media relationships or contacts. PR focuses on certain types of social media like the earned owned social media, word of mouth user forums, customer care services, digital content and blogs (Gupta, 2005, p.492). The first series of the US reality TV show ‘The Spin Crowd’ did not receive the expected reception because of let down by the contracted public relation agency then. In this second series of the TV show, Central PR agency will coordinate the launch and prepare for all media and social media activity for other PR agencies in the EMEA region. The main task for Central PR agency is to provide public relations support for a product the public relations industry did not like. This paper will demonstrate the proactive and innovative media campaign that Central PR agency must come up with, for simultaneous implementation across the EMEA region and to ensure a successful launch of series II of the ‘The Spin Crowd’ TV reality show. Specifically, the paper will attempt to deliver and produce an integrated plan for industrial media activity including a briefing sheet for PR agencies containing needs and deadline requirements, a traditional media release and adaptation for social media use and thoughts on likely audio visual support material to be released to media and social media to gain launch momentum and foster product buy-in. 2. Planning for the Media Campaign The process of media campaign planning for the launch of the TV series will begin with setting up a social media strategy involving creating a pathway for the social media activity in line with overall marketing and communications approach and guided by certain specific objectives. The objective here is to set up a proactive media and social media campaign to promote the TV series before its launch. An internal team at Central PR agency to coordinate the other PR agencies across EMEA region will be formed with roles and responsibilities clearly defined. With a clear strategy in place, social media training would be conducted involving initial training of internal teams and those of other PR agencies to better understand their role. Training should be continued along the way to improve activity performance. Creation and activation of the agreed upon social media platforms will then be done and interactive strategies shall be employed to attract and recruit large audiences to view the content through engagement tactics such as blogger outreach, influencing relationships, collaboration among others as described below. Some examples of content creation which we shall use are blog posts, status updates, videos, interviews, info-graphics and anything useful that can be shared online. As part of monitoring and evaluation, audits shall be carried out to listen, engage, and analyze user feedback as key input to preparing for the launch (Evans, 2012, p. 301). Monitoring will include manual checking of blogs, forums, social networks and communities for keywords and relevant conversations. Social media audit would involve benchmarking our presence on the social or digital front with other platforms in similar industry as well as trying to get an understanding of what conversation drivers are crucial to the achievement of our objective. An integrated approach shall therefore be important with responsibilities shared and coordinated between disciplines such as communications, PR web, digital marketing and brand customer service. 3. Briefing sheet for other PR Agencies To achieve a successful media campaign as the lead PR firm, we shall emphasize to the core team representing different countries in the EMEA region the key aspects of an effective media campaign. First, the purpose must be set out clearly and understood by all, to be able to attract and sustain traffic or audience and be in a position to measure achievement of goals along the way. An integrated plan involving setting realistic goals, creation and popularization of the content or message will be put in place to achieve the purpose effectively. For social media, for example, strategy will involve use of different blog spots and social websites. The relevance of content and the idea targeted to be communicated will be of essence to create impact. Studying the targeted websites will be critical to determine how content will be packaged based on the type of audiences and their preferences (Reddi, 2009, p. 408). This first stage of the media campaign process involving mainly baseline survey and planning will require a number of resources including the team constituted by key technical people from each PR agency, a budget allocation for materials and remuneration of human effort and might take a period not exceeding three months to complete. We shall also seek to take advantage of the existing support audience from the fact that the reality TV show already showcased its first series. We shall take contacts of some of these fans with strong networks on social media to influence voting and support for the second series. Because we are only interested in generating traffic or audience numbers on the media, we shall underline the importance of engaging the users by subscribing to RSS feeds for example to get feedback and inform next action. To begin building on long term success, it will be important to have a well conceived plan resulting in rich profiles and extensive audience networks which when implemented successfully will be duplicated in a future campaign and act as a building block for future success on this project (Shimp, 2008, p. 305). Lastly, reliable hosting for social media will be critical to guard against downtimes and failures. The implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the campaign will require additional human resources, finances, appropriate media materials and an estimated accomplishment period of one month before the launch date. 4. Traditional Media Release This would basically take the form of news release or conference where it is important to choose issues carefully to get the message clear to the wider public. Making a list of priorities and scheduling media releases and opportunities by getting ideas from the teams is important to make the news editor’s job easier in terms of appeal of style and format. The list will group related stories and issues together while both the list and the schedule will be used to measure achievement of goals for the media campaign. With draft news releases in line with listed issues, a news conference will be called where different media is invited to attend. The invitations will be done through an advance notice with media advisory (Parker, 2010, p. 15). It is critical to develop relationships with news media to gain credibility and enhance success of the media campaign. Credibility not only enables proactive message creation and distribution but leads to cordial coexistence where media people will seek our indulgence when there are stories that require our responses. Central PR agency will ensure honesty with the public and the media because this will finally determine the credibility and trust of the product. 5. Audio Visual Support Material to Be Released Before the Launch A successful launch of series II of ‘The Spin Crowd’ will involve targeting the technologically well-up audiences mainly through the renowned blog spots and bloggers to provide an online platform for discussions and promotion of the second series. The use of photo and video technologies here would be a good idea because viewers of these blogs would ordinarily learn new information about ‘The Spin Crowd’ and share the videos and photos with their friends in other social media like face book, Twitter etc. By initiating discussions on these blog platforms, the public relations team will be able to gauge the level of acceptability of the product well before the launch and perhaps improve on areas suggested by the different audiences. Using You Tube for pictures and photographs will be a very effective communication tool and carry a huge portion of the message compared to scripts. Creative and innovative animations will be useful in better delivering the message home, entertaining and encouraging ideas and comments from the audience. This will be an effective way of marketing and promoting the second series ensuring that only key highlights are disclosed about how different the series will be this time round and keeping in mind that necessary anxiety is needed to raise expectations ahead of the launch (Rice, and Atkin, 2000, p. 198). Technically, the team will be involved in working with Google professionals and in using the specialized You-tube True view format where one can buy key words that attract fast traffic to the content about the product, thus creating impact in message delivery and generating and sustaining numbers on social media. A great advantage of this media is that it is available 24 hours a day and people can have access to the Internet sites at their own time and pace. With use of low value prizes, we will create fun pages on the main social media platforms to promote the second series and target to significantly increase the count on the number of fans, increase page visits and votes by offering low-value prizes where users get a chance to feature in competitions with an aim to win thereby bringing their friends on board. The series highlights would be incorporated in a behind the scene action through what is called behind scenes product placement in a movie or a TV show where the content in form of video, photos, and script may be posted on key social media such as Facebook and Twitter. This strategy will give viewers an opportunity to see and learn about the envisaged launch of the series creating anxiety and a waiting attitude to raise expectations (Scott, 2010, p. 3). To generate fan numbers on social media and improve its composition, we shall make use of techniques of personal involvement and sharing in social media. We will create an interactive campaign say on Face book and renowned and upcoming platforms to have a weekly product giveaway which incentives the audience to participate regularly as well as encourages them to recommend their friends to join the contest. The competition may involve unlocking of prizes through a game strategy and actively engaging the fans on a regular basis, giving them a reason to invite their friends on board. To take advantage of the existing fan base is a perfect strategy for the ‘The Spin Crowd’ series comeback. With an already existing fan base, Central PR agency could create a fan page titled ‘The Spin Crowd’ on the common social media platforms and convert this to an official brand page in preparation for the launch and for sustained digital world presence thereafter. The branding will include creation of brand voice, language and topic that will be used on the social media as well as being actively involved in posting fan content, updates, answering questions, and responding to comments. These are aspects of brand personality, level of responsiveness, sensitivity to audience concerns, content quality and management which are important in creating and reaching a wide and deeply involved audience in marketing the product particularly on social media (Turner and Shah, 2010, p.65). We shall provide valuable, interesting and entertaining information to attract people to learn about the revamped product. The social media will also be heavily linked with similar sites and blogs in the same industry and market to share information and content. We shall also make it easy for fans to contact any of the PR agencies and create possibilities for online reach out. The media shall also encourage online interaction through discussions, leadership and organization and will easily provide abilities for people to find information about this second series of the show by tagging our fun page as well as book marking it to other related and relevant sites. The platform will most definitely provide capabilities for experimentation where users can try out new things at their wish. Some of the common audio visual applications that we might utilize include radio and television broadcasting and programming using audio and video tapes, compact disks as well as digital video disks which form part of the electronic media. We could also use cinema and lasers. On the print media category, there are options such as putting sensitization messages in local newspapers, magazines, newsletters, bulletins and other public written mediums. The PR firms that will work under the guidance of central PR agency will come in handy in generating professional and skilled audio visual material and a mix of different methods will need to be used because not a single audio visual technology may be said to be effective. For electronic marketing, we shall use the Television and radio depending on the level of usage of each in the EMEA countries. Print media including newspapers and magazines will also be considered. Radio sensitization will be used in countries with significant cultural diversity with different languages spoken. Radio broadcasting will also reach additional audience through internet radio. Television broadcasting is considered more impacting in passing the message effectively especially with the elite societies ad has potential to reach a wide audience. With product we are seeking to market is a TV reality show in the US, this medium shall be useful in creating awareness and necessary publicity for a successful launch and progress thereafter. TV is effective because it incorporates both images and sound and is befitting to audiences who are not in favour of print material (Duhe, 2007, p. 199). We shall make use of multimedia equipment such as CD-ROM, DVD and the internet because these are more interactive and entertaining to the users though a cost benefit analysis needs to be carried out to determine if it is worth the cost because it can be expensive compared to other mediums. Similar to TV, we shall also consider using cinema to reach out to a wider audience comprising of the younger generation. DVD technology which is a new technology combining the traditional audio tapes or compact disks as well as video tapes in a portable format has gained prominence and we shall put it into consideration in finally deciding the media to use. Use of audio visual media is a sure way to help in delivering information in a much simpler way. They promote participation and interest from the public. Reference List Brogan, C 2010, Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online, New York, John Wiley & Sons. Duhe, SC 2007, New Media and Public Relations, New York, Peter Lang. Evans, D 2012, Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, Canada, John Wiley & Sons. Gupta, D 2005, Handbook of Advertising Media and Public Relations, New Delhi, Mittal Publications. Parker, C 2010, 301 Ways to Use Social Media to Boost Your Marketing, Canada, McGraw-Hill Professional. Reddi, NC 2009, Effective Public Relations and Media Strategy, New Delhi, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Rice, RE and Atkin, CK 2000, Public Communication Campaigns, London, SAGE Publications Inc. Scott, DM 2010, The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, UK, Wiley. Shimp, TA 2008, Advertising, Promotion, and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications, London, Cengage Learning. Turner, J and Shah, R 2010, How to Make Money with Social Media: An Insiders Guide on Using New and Emerging Media to Grow Your Business, New Jersey, FT Press. Read More