Role and Impact of Social Media in PR: Taylor Swift
The use of social media is one of the best strategies to reach out to potential clients in the music industry. The case presented shows how Taylor Swift uses social media to remain relevant and competitive in the industry. She uses the media differently from the competitors in several ways. The first strategy is through creation of good relationships with her fans. An example is where she commented on Hannah’s post, who was being bullied in school. The fan was experiencing hard moments and so the singer wrote to her a heartfelt message comforting her by saying “keep walking in the sunlight.” Developing positive relationships helps in attracting and maintaining new and current fans and thus helping the singer remain competitive.
The second strategy that Swift uses in social media is being genuine and honest. People prefer real and genuine people who they can interact and relate to with in the business world and Taylor demonstrates this in several ways. Most of her competitors use their public relations personnel to engage their fans whereas Taylor Swift engages herself with the audience. She personalizes her account to fit her personality and overall beliefs. The other example is where the singer creates a personal touch with her fans for instance the case where she had lunch with a 17-year-old girl who was battling cancer and she threw a private concert for a 6-year-old patient suffering from Leukemia. “These cases make the singer look different from the competitors and thus an effective social media strategy of achieving public relations”.
The other strategy used by Taylor Swift is standing for something. This is evident in the case whereby Apple was not paying artists for the three-month free trial. She posted in her Tumblr page that she will withhold her album until the three months trial was over. Apple reacted by paying the artist since the music was not free and so Apple was trying to take advantage of them. Lastly, the social media Queen promotes creativity. Taylor Swift entices her fans by showing them the upcoming albums before she releases them. This is critical in giving the fans the desire to look forward to her concerts.
Taylor Swift benefited from using social media platforms in several ways. One of the ways is reaching a wider audience. The fact that her posts would go viral ensures that many users get to know her and download her music. The result of this is increased sales and brand creation for her. An example is where she left a message for the girl who was being bulled to encourage her. Social media is one of the cheapest forms of marketing and is great to cut costs but still connect and reach a large audience. Social media platforms help Taylor Swift obtain immediate feedback from the fans which she can act on and meet customer satisfaction. To her therefore, social media is a great research tool since it offers a wide variety of sources of information. This comes at a lower cost as compared to undertaking an actual research in the market.
In addition, Taylor Swift can use other strategies apart from social media as a public relation tool, for instance she can use her celebrity position to influence the decision of Apple regarding their three months free streaming trial decision. Her position can bring in the support of her fans to prevent Apple from taking advantage of the artists in the market. The other option she can use is through charitable events such as visitation of people with chronic diseases, visiting children’s home, upgrading the slums and providing fees to orphans among others social ways. Performing and visiting charitable events is a great way to improve overall public perception and potentially change the minds of Apple.
There are various principles one must adhere to for public relations to be successful. The first principle is avoiding deceit. The person posting for instance in the social media should avoid any false information to prevent worse scenarios from happening. False information in most cases will lead to lack of trust from fans. This will change the perspective clients have in a negative way, thus easily shifting their attention to the competitors.
Taylor Swift can take advantage of these recommendations to improve her public relations. Motivating her fans through giving free albums for the first few people who share her posts and retweets them, can help her in promoting her public relations. The social media queen can also use short and precise messages that can resonate appropriately with the fans. This can motivate the fans to read her posts and thus success in public relations. Taylor Swift can also comment and retweet other people’s posts as a way of showing her social personality with the society. This will promote her public relations
Public relations are an important aspect in the music industry. Taylor Swift has used various strategies such as being supportive, genuine, promoting creativity and standing for something to promote her social media strategy as a way of public relations.
