2010 - Public Relations Society of America

social media marketing is effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness,
improving search rankings, and increasing Web site traffic. These components are all valuable
assets to any public relations practice. Vocus (2009) reiterates some of MarketingSherpa’s points
in its whitepaper highlighting the impact of social media. Vocus’s study provides indicators of
impact, sharing points of influence between social media and public relations. Highlighted points
include: reaching further with a message, generating sale leads, gauging customer satisfaction
and increasing brand recognition. Vocus (2009) stressed, “Social media has removed the filters
between your company and the public” (p. 1).
It is doubtful that public relations will completely step back into its traditional roots, but
instead will look forward to moving ahead with the new social media tools. Gillin (2007) points
out that “mainstream media has become so dependent on social media, in fact, that is hard to
imagine that professional news organizations would let this channel go away” (p. 198). Social
media is going to be here for the long run, so public relations practitioners are charged to
capitalize on this emerging and growing trend of reaching target audiences.
Tying Social Media and Public Relations to Millennials
One of the key components to this study is tying public relations social media tools to
youth, or more specifically, the Millennial Generation or Generation Y. In order to gain a deeper
understanding of the literature that has been produced on the subject, the following section
provides some facts from the most comprehensive study of the Millennial Generation and social
media.
Pew Internet & American Life Project team of Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, and Smith
(2007), released a comprehensive study of teens and social media. The 36-page document is full
of statistical support for why this younger audience is grabbing hold and increasingly utilizing
social media tools. In a previous study the researchers noted that they sensed a trend emerging.
Teens were leading the way into the Web 2.0 era. “Online teens have access to tools that can
gain them widespread attention and notoriety in ways that simply were not possible under the
traditional mass media model” (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007, p. 1). In January of
2009, Jones and Fox extended the Pew study by looking specifically at the generations that are
online. Although Jones and Fox’s definition of Gen Y or the Millennial Generation is broader
than many others’ definition (born between 1977 to 1990, ages 18 to 32 in 2009), the study
provided an array of salient information.
First and foremost, Jones and Fox (2009) provided statistics which confirmed that 87% of
the Millennial Generation is indeed online. Furthermore, not only is this demographic on the
Internet, they are creating content and participating with the social media tools in place. Social
networking within this demographic is phenomenal when taking into consideration the
Millennial Generation as compared to all online adult users. Jones and Fox (2009) found that
over half (67%) of Millennial users had a profile on a social network, a striking increase over
what the overall adult users (35%) report.
Although blogging can be a significant part of social networking, it is not always
synonymous with it. Jones and Fox (2009) found that 20% of Millennials blog separately from
social networking. This percentage is double their Gen X (ages 33 to 44) counterparts, 10% of
whom report ever having created a blog. Creating a blog is one thing, but reading is another.
Forty-three percent of all Millennials have read others’ online blogs. Again this is a 9% jump
from Generation X, who has reported only 34% reading of others’ blogs.
Videos are popular for this demographic as well. Although only 52% of online adults
reported having watched a video online, Jones and Fox (2009) reported that 72% of online
11