This week’s reading covered international use of social media for public relations and health as two separate issues. The readings on social media, too, could be divided up, I thought.
As always, Alaimo, while talking about how to pitch stories, offered very solid, practical and applicable advice. Although the purpose of this blog isn’t to recap, I thought some of the advice worth repeating. For instance, she describes Pam Didner’s seven elements for crafting a global social media strategy. Framed as questions, they guide the practitioner to thinking about the connection between activity and outcome:
What are your specific business and communication goals? These should simultaneously include employee recruitment and retention.
Who is your ideal audience, e.g., specific persona? Research this; you may need different ones for different places, depending on commonalities and their absence.
What is your company’s priorities and objectives for each country?
What are your high-level editorial topics?
What is your high-level editorial timeline?
What is your list of content? For each of these three, look at the interests, pain points and challenges of the organization, its product offerings and your personas.
What is your budget and how is it allocated?
Alaimo also notes that it is important to realize that though you may tailor a channel and its content for a product in a particular country, the whole world has access. Utilizing a global database of content that can be tailored saves work, facilitates knowledge-sharing and encourages some degree of consistency. (This reminds me of what I do in my day job, in knowledge management. Too often people in silos reinvent wheels; there are better uses of time and energy.) She also recapped five PR principles, from Kent and Taylor, which had originally applied to websites, but really make sense for social media):
Dialogic loops – monitor and respond 24/7
Provide useful valuable info
Give reason for visitors to return.
Make info easy to understand
Keep visitors on your site/platform/channel
Alaimo concluded her advice by recommending to vet content, keep up a steady level of activity to be seen as transparent and credible and be ready for crisis communications.
This chart looks at age and region in relation to social media usage. It and the others on this page all come from Global social media research summary August 2020, from Smart Insights Media, found at https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/
The other social media-oriented pieces varied on content, but compared to some extent developed and developing countries.
The Pew Research piece noted that the digital divide was still there but closing. People in countries who didn’t have landlines are getting cell phones and using social media. India and sub-Saharan Africa lag, but that gap too may have closed since this was published in 2018. Similarly, Udanor et al., two years prior looked specifically at the impact of one hashtag’s activity on Twitter and its impact on Nigerian political elections to draw conclusions about social media analytics and its ability to predict trends in developing nations. Jumping from one hashtag in one country to that seems like a big extrapolation to me. At any rate, the researchers took a big data approach and appreciated the tools they used. But if the purpose was to use data to predict trends, the fact that they reviewed tweets from April 15-April 20, 2015, which was after the general elections took place on March 28-29, didn’t make sense to me.
Both are from Global social media research summary August 2020
Stanislavská et al. (2020) used a big data haul on Instagram over about a year from late 2017 to late 2018 to review corporate social responsibility. While they found that developed and developing countries used hashtags together for charity and CSR or social good and CSR, they differed with hashtags for sustainability (favored far more by developed countries) and education (used more in developing countries). The authors extrapolated from this what PR practitioners might want to consider regarding priorities or best ways to reach audiences in different parts of the world. Then they jumped to say that the absence of promoting economic value in developing nations means that this ought to be used to differentiate organizations from their competition. I am not sure that I would connect the dots between the findings and the conclusions the same way.
On the health front, two articles looked at how countries approached health crises from a public health perspective, which requires communication to different publics. In a post-Ebola and post-Zika review, Suthar et al. (2018) noted that only 127 of 192 countries met all International Health Regulations (IHR) core capacity requirements. They looked at how core capabilities were met and the challenges in meeting them by doing a lit review. Was not clear if they only looked at lit from the 65 countries that succeeded 100% or also looked at lit from those who only achieved partial success and might’ve spoken more clearly about obstacles. Espinal et al. (2016) focused on Ebola in the context of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Understanding that public health functions which can track, report, respond to events is one key area, as is the ability to quickly and transparently share information. Their review of 33 countries showed though countries differed, overall they were in a good place and if recommended improvements were put into place, would be in a strong position to deal with future health crises. They also noted that a more objective and methodical way of monitoring closing gaps with the IHR would make the guidelines more relevant. Had I read this first, I might’ve seen Suthar’s in a different light due to Espinal’s note about increasing the relevance of the IHR. Instead, I couldn’t help but wonder if Suthar et al. placed too much emphasis on those who’ve overcome obstacles to meet the standards instead of those still facing challenges. If their lit review did not include the almost 130 countries which haven’t fulfilled IHR, then how could they really address what is standing in the way?
The last piece pulled social media and heath together. It didn’t take reams of data on social media and crunch numbers, but note that a reliable non-profit non-government entity posted much in Syria about COVID-19 and that it was a reliable source. What it did not report is any analytics about the 313 pieces the Syrian Research Network published. How many people clicked and read?
Again, from Global social media research summary August 2020
I appreciate research with data behind it, but for me, these academic studies missed a few boats. Data, whether big or small, has to make sense in terms of how findings are connected to the discussion and conclusion. Recommendation that do not stem from the data or don’t have data behind it are merely conjecture.
This was a difficult week to pull together, since the readings were very different.
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Abdul-Baki, M.N., Dhemesh, Y., Alasadi, L and Alsuliman, T. (2020) The substantial awareness role of web-based and social media platforms in developing countries during a pandemic scenario: the example of COVID-19. Journal of Public Health. 42(3) 642-643.
Alaimo, K. (2017). Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street: How to Practice Global Public Relations and Strategic Communication. New York: Routledge.
Espinal, M., Aldighieri, S., St John, R., Becerra-Posada, F.& Etienne, C. (2016) International Health Regulations, Ebola, and Emerging Infections Diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean. American Journal of Public Health. 106(2):279–282
Poushter, J., Caldwell, B. and Chwe, H. (2018). Social media use continues to rise in developing countries but plateaus across developed ones. Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/06/19/social-media-use-continues-to-rise-in-developing-countries-but-plateaus-across-developed-ones/
Stanislavská, L. K., Pilar, L., Margarisová, K. and Kvasniˇcka, R. (2020). Corporate social responsibility and social media: Comparison between developing and developed countries. Sustainability. 12, 5255
Suthar, A.B., Allen, L.G., Cifuentes, S, Dye, C. & Nagata, J.M. (2018). Lessons learnt from implementation of the International Health Regulations: a systematic review. Bull World Health Organ 96, 110–121E
Udanor, C., Aneke, S. and Ogbuokiri, B.O. (2016). Determining social media impact on the politics of developing countries using social network analytics. Program 50(4). 481-507.