On April 26, 2011, I saw Michael Brito, Vice President of Edleman Digital, present his lecture: From Social Business to Social Brand. Mr. Brito spoke of the importance of how the use of social media by both consumers and companies has an immense impact on businesses. The audience was encouraged to Tweet about the lecture using the hashtag, #Brittalk. This in itself completely proves Brito’s point of how much of an influence social media has over users.
Brito reinforced one of the major points that we have discussed throughout the entire semester. He stated that honesty and trust are two of the most important factors that PR practitioners need to be aware of when reaching publics, especially in the realm of social media. Being an honest and truthful practitioner is definitely one of the major concepts that I will apply to my future learning and career; gaining and keeping the trust of publics is arguably the most important part of being in PR.
Brito explained that the social customer is both more demanding and powerful than ever before due to the rapid growth of social media. To keep up with this, brands and business must communicate effectively with these consumers, meaning that it is essential to directly interact with these consumers—now easily accomplished through social media. Brito went into further detail by describing the importance of businesses using advocates of their company to an advantage, as well as providing them with relevant content to work off of. Hearing Michael Brito speak gave me a much better insight as to how essential social media is to all types of businesses and just how influential we are as advocate consumers.
