ISSN 2319-5339 IISUniv.J.A. Vol.

9(1), 188-195 (2020)

Digital Practices in Public Relations

Jolly Jain

Abstract
While the internet and social media have made it easy to spread news and
information, it has also been activated Advertising and Public Relations
agencies to influence public opinion by adopting new ways of
communication. Today, a person with basic knowledge of computer and
internet can reach to mass audiences in different number of ways. This new
age communication can be referred as Digital Public Relations. Digital PR is
a mixture of traditional practices of public relations blended with social
media content and search engine optimization therefore, transforming steady
news into interactive mode by establishing direct connection with target
audience. The recent development in technology with endless use of Internet
has grown exponentially. One can now connect with friends and family,
colleagues, look for recommendations, suggestions and associate strongly
with commodities – in both traditional and digital space. Nowadays, PR
professionals started using social media in their regular PR practice. They
connect with journalists, participate in forums, share client’s story and
increase external communications for an organization. This paper looks
into the latest digital practices adopted by Public Relations professionals
and explores the latest trends in practice.
Keywords : Digital public relations; Public relations; Social media.

Introduction
The public relations professionals are highly practicing digital public
relations activities because the internet plays a vital role in people’s life,
quoted in a report by Dutton, diGennaro and Hargrave. The research states
that the internet is very important to most of the people where more than 7 in
10 believe that the internet is improving their life as it saves time. 60% of
user’s did multiple taskas like listen to music, watch TV or read while
online. About 74% users use internet to gather information, 71% for sending
emails to friends, and around 45% for online shopping. Almost half ie 42 %
go online for work and 76% believes that people participate online for
expressing their views.
According to a recent survey by market and opinion research firm Ipsos in
2016, 82% of internet users in the country said they cannot imagine life

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without internet which is even higher than the UK, China, and the US. The
poll was conducted with 18,180 adults across 23 countries between Sept. 12
and Oct. 11, 2016. With this dynamics of Internet in India, it is essential for
organizations to connect with their publics on internet. Journalists, these
days regularly create digital content on different social media platforms in
form of text, podcasts, vodcasts, pictures, and blogs. This age of social media
benefits PR people by establishing direct connect with Influencers and
journalists through digital channels. Twitter is one of the platforms, where
journalists share stories on their social media handles (Chartered Institute
of Public Relations, 2012). Social Platforms like Twitter, Facebook often
used to break story or video which goes viral rapidly by sharing. The rapid
rise of social networking sites changed the entire ecosystem as they are
highly dynamic and reactive.
Organization these days, demand 360 degree visibility from their marketing
agency which include piece of news in print or TV media, presence on
social media like FB page or twitter handle. Rob Brown in his book said that
we have now entered a third phase since the inception of digital marketing
and the arrival of this third wave of digital communications, is characterized
by user-generated content (UGC). Social Media is a users platform hence
content created on social media is user generated therefore, more interesting
content will spread more. A public relations professional, consider Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, YouTube as major social media platforms for
promotion as these platforms have maximum users. Just as PR professionals
write press releases for print media, and make arrangements for TV media,
they also write content for social media. All these above mentioned platforms
are different from each other. Facebook accepts text, video, image to create
an impactful post while twitter accepts short text, short video or image. So,
along with pitching the story to traditional media, PR professionals are also
sharing the same on different social media platforms according to their
respective formats. Blend of traditional communication tactics and digital
practices are magnifying communication which helps in establishing deeper
connection with the publics. The traditional press release is gradually
transforming into a more advanced form of communication by creating Social
Media Release (SMR) template (Deirdre Breakenridge, 2008). According to
Breakenridge, SMR is a tool helps in communicating through meaningful
information, précised data in form of content which can be shared with
journalists; before he or she finds it from others source.
A basic press release can be enhanced by adding interactive feature to make
it Social Media Release like Really Simple Syndication (RSS) direct news
feeds and links. Sharing high resolution photographs, Videos, links to
previous coverage (like del.icio.us or Digg) for social bookmarking or links

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to blogs (Philip and Young, 2009).Hence it is widely observed that PR

Professionals started incorporating new strategies keeping in mind the format
and impact of social media in Public Relations.

Review of Literature:
Since the concept of utilizing social media into Public Relations is less
explored, still a lot of books had been written on the same which argues on
different angles. Richard Edelman, CEO Edelman says that social media
has altered “the nature of how we do what we do”. Solis and Breakenridge
in their book mentioned that ‘shift from pitching to participating, from
selling a story to telling a story’. Weber (2007) in his book, comments that
the world of communication is remarkably heading towards digital mode,
and those who are learning and practicing these tactics, will be able to
express effectively. Therefore, veteran PR specialists believe that this is the
peak of a magnificent era which is undergoing major changes in PR
practice. It implies that there are advanced tactics which might help
organization to serve marketing needs and requirements. Butterick (2011)
also emphasize on the growth of digital media and comments that upgrading
the mediums of communication linked to PR, will give enormous impact on
public relations.
A lot was also argued on the content used on social media to practice Public
Relations. Solis and Breakenridge in their book, tries to explain that, UGC
(User Generated Content) is the actual cause of practicing PR on social
media. It altered the “equation of influence” and empowering ordinary
people (Solis, 2011). They further said that in the world of Web 2.0,
conversation is playing a vital role in establishing relation with publics
rather than content.
Social networks are the most preferred platform for generating and sharing
content, where 75 percent people are doing this regularly on Internet. (Young.
2009)
Internet is providing possible opportunities for public relations practitioners
of assembling data, observe public reactions on current issues, and involve
with them directly for identifying insights. Therefore, it is now become easier
to reach the target audiences and influencers through social media not locally
but also globally.

Discussion:
Social media precisely in India is gaining popularity at an enormous rate.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest are some of the social
network popular amongst Indians. The users of this social network are

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increasing day by day. According to a recent survey by Hootsuite and

Wearesocial in January 2019, of the total Indian population, 310.0 million
users are active on Social Media. Their survey claims that 93% are active on
YouTube, 89% on Facebook, 69% on Instagram while 57% and 48%
respectively on twitter and LinkedIn.
The use of Hashtags”#” for organizing content is in trend on Twitter mostly
and other social networking sites, which is use to identify messages on a
particular topic. This helps in making content or news or information
trending on social sites when masses are talking about it. This popularity of
photo, video, article is also known as Viral Content as it spreads rapidly on
online and social media. Recent examples of some of the Viral Content are
1. #jcbkiKhudai: Recently, JCB ki khudai comes was trending because of
the statement given by one of the MP of Hyderabad. He was discussing
the issue of unemployment in India, where he said a controversial
statement that, “India me berozgaari itni hai ki agar kahin JCB ki khudai
ka kaam chal raha ho toh who dekhne ke liye bhi bheed ikhatti ho jati
hai”. After his statement, local Facebook and twitter groups of that
particular area started creating memes on that and after that “JCB ki
khudai” started trending on various social media and online platforms.
Most of the memes are made on how Indians tend to gather around to
watch these vehicles dig and transport earth/mud/tar had gone viral
for couple of days.
All the memes and jokes around #JCBKiKhudai got a shot of credibility
when the official Twitter of JCB acknowledged the ‘love’.

Also, the entire movement has brought about a ton of free, ‘earned media’
attention for a brand like JCB which concentrates mostly on B2B
communication and has very little to do with the B2C communication.
Netizens have even dug up old videos of the earth-digger in action to
produce memes and have even dragged cricketers, popular politicians
and Bollywood actors into their graphic images to enhance the meme
experience. This created a huge publicity for JCB in no cost.
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2. #Zomato: Recently Zomato was in news when a video of especially

abled man in a Zomato T-shirt and with a delivery bag in his hand-
operated tricycle speeding towards the destination to deliver food. The
said video was appreciated and shared across the social media. This
man is seen doing his job like anyone would without any complains
and grievances. This zomato delivery man is not just making news but
is also inspiring people. Moreover celebrities seem to be in awe of this
delivery man too. Such an act of zomato to step forward and empower
such people is really appreciable. Later, zomato surprised the especially
abled delivery man with an electric vehicle by zomato to help him deliver
food in his area more conveniently. The entire act has brought almost
free of cost exposure on Internet and super attention for the Food deliver
app Zomato as how inclusive zomato is when it comes to employing
people.

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In both of the above case studies, PR team of the respective organization

amplified the attention by spreading the word in online and offline
communities. There are lots of other stories around on how corporates
are gaining and loosing popularity via social media.
The above discussion also brings our attention towards the fact that if
social media can enhance the credibility of an organization, it can also
damage the image of the organization at a same speed. But at a large,
social media has enhanced the practice of PR by making it easy to reach
a huge number of publics, cheaply and within a short time.
The above mentioned two case studies show the benefits of strong
presence on social media. The below example is therefore a contradiction
which shows that if an organization is involved in some wrong or foul
practices, they can be dragged easily on same social media platform.
3. The Rahul Bose going banana story: The said moment which broke the
internet was started by bollywood actor Rahul Bose who was staying at
JW Marriott in Chandigarh. The actor was charged with Rs.442 for the
“fruit platter” which has only 2 bananas in it. He ordered 2 bananas
post his workout session at the hotel’s gym. The actor took to twitter to
share his shock over the whole incident and post the bill and his own
video on the twitter account. The video went viral within few minutes
and saw an outpour of reactions from twitter users across the country.

Following the actor’s viral video, Deputy Commissioner of Chandigarh

ordered probe and asked The Hotel, JW Marriott to explain the cost.

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The video has garnered more 143K views on twitter and 159K retweets
so far. Sometime after his bananas story went viral, twitterites began
sharing their own ‘Rahul Bose moments’ - their experiences of being
fleeced for a product or service with a #rahulbosemoments.
Later, the excise and taxation dept. fines the hotel for Rs. 25000 for
collecting illegal tax on an exempted item (fresh fruit). In the same series,
several Indian brands like OYO rooms, Amazon, policy bazaar also
took to social media by sharing hilarious memes on the issue.

4. #Sareetwitter: The #sareetwitter was a recent trend on twitter which a

huge participation of females ranging from celebrities to politicians.
The trend started by Priyanka Gandhi, where she shared a throwback
picture of herself wearing a saree. After this, women from all walks of
life shared their trendy and graceful pictures in Saree.
#sareetwitter saw huge response from actors, politician and influential
personalities where they post their pictures in saree. The pictures also
have their families and friends posing with them. The interesting thing
came out to be that lots of foreigners are also participated in this trending
issue which shows India culture acceptability among foreigners. Some
male users also shared the pictures of their mother, wife & daughter in
their favorite saree.
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This trend gave the chance to common man to be a part of trending

community. Some memes are also shared on twitter to bring a humorous
content out of this trend. Also, Some saree brands have also leveraged
this opportunity and promoted their brand during this ongoing social
media activity.

Conclusion:
Incorporating social media in public relation is a new phenomenon in India;
hence, existing PR practitioners are required to scale up their skills especially
on how social media can be best tapped into. If social media are to be fully
utilized by public relations practitioners, they need to be more skilled in
areas such as website management, social media marketing, search engine
optimization , web analytics etc, which will help them to spread the word
in a more organized manner and hit the target audience.
Another important factor for using social media into public relations is to
develop strategies for different social media platforms which will be easily
acceptable by online communities. It is the need of the hour as the
organizations are demanding 360 degrees visibility across media platforms
and hence PR professionals need to brace up for the same.
The study concluded that social media is dramatically changing the way
PR is practiced. Social media has accelerated and intensified the way public
relations practitioners communicate, relate, their attitudes and tools/
methods of practice. Social media has created new dimensions of
communication with their internal and external publics.

Works Cited
Breakenridge, D., (2008), PR 2.0 - New Media, New Tools, New Audiences. United
States : Financial Times Press.
Brian S. and Breakenridge D., (2009), Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.
United States: Financial Times Press.
Brown R., (2009), Public Relations and The Social Web. Great Britain and United
States: Kogan Page limited
Butterick K., (2011), Introducing Public Relations. London, California, India,
Singapore: Sage Publications
Phillips D. and Philip Y., (2009), Online Public Relations. London and
Philadelphia: Kogan Page Limited
Solis Brian, 2011, The State of Social Media 2011: Social is the New Normal.
The charted Institute of Public Relations, 2012, Share This, United Kingdom,
John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

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