WORKING WITH THE SOCIAL MEDIA: A SURVEY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICE OF TWO LEADING MULTINATIONAL ORGANISATIONS IN NIGERIA
Abstract
The arrival of social media no doubt redefined the way things are done in almost every sphere of life; public relation is not an exemption. Owing to the strategic position of multinational companies globally, it becomes increasingly important that they catch up with these new technological realities, especially in their public relations departments. The reason for this being that the interactive nature of social media offers organisations and PR professionals the opportunity to reach their teeming publics and at the same time be reached more effectively. Anchored on the Dialogic Theory of Public Relations, the study posed three research questions which include the following: to what extent do Coca-Cola and Nestlé employ social media in their public relation effort? What strategies characterise the use of social media for PR by Coca-Cola and Nestlé? What is the extent of audience exposure to social media-based PR communication of Coca-Cola and Nestlé? The researchers adopted a survey design and had a sample size of 400 respondents. The findings of the study revealed the following: that Coca-Cola and Nestlé employed social media for public relations purposes, that the platforms employed by these organisations included Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp, while the PR messages came in the form of news of company events, press releases/announcements, information about product/brand, and invitation to like page. Furthermore it was revealed that in using social media for PR, Coca-Cola and Nestlé adopted strategies that involved projecting their images and finally that audience exposure to social media-based PR communication of Coca-Cola and Nestlé was significantly low and that regularity of exposure was also low among those that were exposed to the messages.
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