Threats and opportunities for public relations in online communities - publié le 07/05/2008

Résumé du document

In 1982, the Chicago senior public relations (PR) consultant Philip Lesly wrote: "You won't be able to practice public relations effectively in the last half of the 1980's with just a local phone, a mimeograph machine and postage stamps, as the pioneers of this field did? (Reilly, 1987). His forecast was certainly right about the middle eighties, but is also much relevant to present times. Back in 2007, big companies tried to buy the so-called community websites such as Youtube, MySpace or more recently Facebook (ITWorld.com, 2007). Those websites have seen their popularity increased over the last decade although the phenomenon is not new: before online "web? communities (blogs, forums, wikis), several other computer-mediated communication protocols allowed users to integrate virtual groups such as Usenet (1979) and Internet Relay Chat (IRC ? 1988) or even e-mail, through mailing-lists (Holtz, 2002, p37).

Extraits

[...] A deep analysis on how companies can successfully encourage online communities would certainly highlight the new areas organisations need to focus on. References ABC News (2007) Absolute Poker Admits "Internal Breach". Available from http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=3752500&page=1 (Accessed 24 October 2007). AFP (2006) Wikipedia reviewing US, Canadian and British political bios. Available from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmafp/is_200602/ai_n16069163 (Accessed 24 October 2007) Farquhar, J. and Rowley, J. (2006) Relationships and online consumer communities, Business Process Management Journal. Vol No pp. 162- 177. Accessed via Emerald at on 24 October 2007. FreeSkyarov.org (2007) Free Dmitry Sklyarov!. [...]

[...] Available from http://www.prsa.org/conf2007/program/workshops.cfm?viewby=Track&ptid=1&pdset (Accessed 24 October 2007). Shang, R.A., Chen, Y.C. and Liao, H.J. (2006) The value of participation in virtual consumer communities on brand loyalty. Internet Research. Vol No pp. 398-418. Accessed via Emerald at on 24 October 2007. WebProNews (2007) http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/10/24/prsa-social- media-for-pr-practitioners. Retrieved online from http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/10/24/prsa-social-media-for-pr- practitioners (Accessed 24 October 2007). [...]

[...] Freesklyarov.org (2007) and other websites coordinated a storm of protests from the online community. Most probably because of the pressure, Adobe itself recommended his release. The jury in charge of the trial against the company Slyarov worked for concluded that U.S. laws had not been violated. This “smart could have been disastrous for Adobe, since most of its softwares (Photoshop, Illustrator) require a certain level of skills and are therefore mainly used by computer professionals. What a company certainly does not want is to become its principal customers' enemy (Maclaran and Catterall, 2002). [...]

[...] Many practitioners do not take enough time to online and really become members of such communities. Holtz (2002) explains this by what he calls “billable time pressure", meaning that getting to know a community requires lots of times, for what seems to be for too many practitioners a poor return on investment. As Hagel (1999) said, a successful web presence requires the emergence of a community, along with commerce, content and communication. This essay highlighted the threats companies will probably have to face in the future if they do not take into account the growing phenomenon of online communities and smart-mobs. [...]

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