Do we hire for "free" media?

Hi, buddies, I am back again! Haha. Do you all know that public relations must always keep in touch with media. There are many types of the media in this advanced technology society which can be distributed into two big categories which is traditional media and new media. The example of the new media is newspaper, magazine, television, radio and book. While the new media can be explain as online media such as social media (facebook, instagram, wechat, blogger, youtube, twitter, whatsapp and so on), online newspaper and magazine, satellite radio, email, and more. The function of those media is wants to spread out the information and news to the world and make their life become convenience and entertaining.

Traditional Media &New Media

Is it all the media is free of charge? 

The answer is.........

Most of the traditional media is need to pay. For example, when the company needs to publish their product’s advertisement on the newspaper or magazine, they need to pay money due to the size of the advertisement. This income is the main reasons why the newspaper and magazine organization can be survived after the appearance of the new media. Besides that, not online printed media need to pay. Why I say so? For example, some of the online journal needs to subscribe and pay if you want to read it. Journal is useful when public relations are doing their research toward particular product. Those paying media calls “freemium”.  I know you all will curious about which media is “free”? Most of the social media is free. For example, some of the company has its own blogger to publish their own detail information such as history, objective, products and services. This type of publishing is free of charge which allows them to publish anything in anytime. Other than blogger, Youtube is one of the free social media. So, some of the company will make the advertisement become video and posted up on it rather than to pay money to publish on the newspaper or other media.

Examples of Social Media

How to handle well for this “free” media? 

We need some expert of the social media to keep updated latest trend of the information. These types of the experts call as New Media Executive or Social Media Specialists. Most of the people will mess up that the responsibility of public relations for managing the “free” media. In fact, it is only the small part of the job scope of public relations. How public relations executive differ with new media executive? For public relations executive, they just need to cover the information of their field only while social media executive need to cover field of public relations, advertising and marketing. For examples, public relations is responsible to manage their client’s crisis but it not the professional of the social media executive. Apart from this, new media is a field which functioned as spreading the news while public relations are the one who create news. Throughout some event, public relations need to write a news release toward that event and the work of promoting is belongs to social media executive. From this, we can see that the job scope two types of media professional are interred-connected. They need to always keep in touch with each other to reach the objective and target of that particular event.

Do we need to hire a new media executive? 

YES because... 

1. New media executive is the one who keep update the latest trend. If they do not keep updated, public cannot get the timeliness information and it will be fall into disuse by society.

2.After the public get the new information, they can give the feedback or own opinion immediately. By all this feedback, the company can get to know the consumer behaviour and adjust their company’s marketing strategy and tactics.  From this, new media executive is responsible to connect with the audience. 

3. A new media executive needs to know and understand the company well. They should know what are the shortcoming and strong point of that company. 

4. New media executive is monitoring that company’s social media analytic and making adjustments as your audience's focus shifts from day to night and season to season.

What is the expectation of the new media executive?

They expected that new media can help them reach wide range of target audience in a short time. It saves time, money and energy. New media also makes the news become interesting. By posting up the information through online, it increases its visualization such as there has many colorful images to improve the understanding of the public toward the information.  

In conclusion, in my opinion, we are not necessary to hire a social media executive. If the company is a small structure company, it does not need to hire them as public relations can handle the job scope of them. It can help the company to save the cost. But social media executive is able to decrease the burden of the public relations. In my view, they are a pair of “good friend” in media who helping each other when doing something. 

Thanks you!