To succeed in the world of social media be transparent and engaging!

My usual mornings at my internship include sipping a take-away coffee whilst reading up on industry blogs and researching social media strategies. One interesting analogy I came across was through a column written by Trond Lyngbo involving the peppered moth. These moths, once white with black spots, faced a strange challenge in London during the Industrial Revolution where buildings and trees turned black. The light coloured moths could no longer hide against this backdrop, however some survived by turning black themselves.

The lesson learnt from this moth was clear – to survive you must adapt and change with your environment…otherwise you’re dead! This parallel relates to how social media has shifted and how it is imperative to adapt to these changes within the world of social media, if not, you have less of a chance in succeeding. This article greatly interested me as one of my main priorities and tasks within my internship is social media management. 

Social media is changing every day, from new hashtags to new apps, there is never a dull moment! I have already become knowledgeable on a range of mediums of social media networks that I had previously never heard of. Google +, Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, Pinterest, Weblogs, YouTube, LinkedIn and the list goes on...

I am responsible for uploading daily posts and monitoring comments for an array of our clients, which can be quite a tedious job as controlling messages on the digital world is becoming seemingly more difficult. As fourth year public relations students we are all familiar on the importance of transparency for an organisation. Essentially, social media management is all about maintaining this transparency, customer engagement and openness.

It was an exciting opportunity to finally put these years of university theory to practice. My first encounter was responding to a customer complaint on one client's Facebook page – to say the least, this customer was not afraid to speak their mind.  It was my duty to resolve this conflict by responding to the post with a resolution and reporting back to our client. As I’ve learnt through my PR studies, it is essential to deal with these issues online by being wary of censorship, as the way you are seen in the public eye with issues online can either enhance or break your reputation.

This week I was also exposed to the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and in today’s digital realm it is more important than ever and still evolving! Many of the campaigns that I’ve been working on involve SEO, by using social media as a means of multiplying the impact, essentially through creating a viral word-of-mouth newsflash. 

A new task I was given this week was to develop a campaign for The Tradewinds Hotel and more specifically their Christmas functions. The campaign will revolve around generating awareness of this venue as an ideal solution for work colleagues, social groups or family/friends to socialise during the festive season. 

That’s all from me for this week - thank you for reading!

Rachel.