Monday, September 29, 2008

YouTube


A PR professional has to be very careful of monitoring YouTube. There are now jobs in the communication field that rely solely on managing the PR of an organization on the World Wide Web. My friend who worked for the City of Branson said that his main duty was to search the internet, every day, and make sure that the messages being sent out by other internet users was accurate and the way that Branson wanted to be portrayed in online media. For example, if a blogger posted a blog that said he/she just came back from Branson, and his testimonial was that it was a town full of ‘Jesus-freaks ‘and ‘old people’, then my friend’s duty was to reply to that blogger by stating all of the attractions that the blogger must have missed that would have given him a different perspective of Branson. That way, any reader of the blog could see that there are other opinions, and if persuaded, the blogger him/herself could negate his previous statement. YouTube poses that same need for high monitoring. YouTube users have ‘vlogs’ that they can easily say anything in, and it’s our duty as PR professionals to make sure to provide feedback and comments to regulate the messages.

I think that YouTube, if used the right way, can really help an organization. As we saw in the Dr. Wesch video, YouTube users were very angry when someone was disingenuous on YouTube. There was the example of the ‘Emo’ boy from some Mid-Western state who was actually a British boy posing. People got mad, and we saw that they were mad by the responses they posted in both writing and in video. I think that it may be a good idea to find a blog user, someone real and genuine who is willing to truthfully talk about your product/service and have them post in their vlogs a testimonial about what they think of your product/service.

3 comments:

Jameser said...

Margo,

I think you make some excellent points. Let's assume our jobs were to monitor YouTube videos and reply in kind to both positive and negative posts about the organization we represented. What would we do if those videos were fake? How do we even know what videos are real or not? To me, it seems almost impossible to be able to monitor YouTube and not only distinguish between real or fake videos, but also how do you respond in kind to each? If I ever get a job in PR, I don't want that one.

-James

krseRN said...

I agree, excellent points. I hadn't thought of the constant monitoring needed of YouTube for your product. Its almost frightening to think about but if a PR professional uses YouTube as PR media then it definitely has the potential of unleashing a war of video and feedback that you may never have meant to initiated. However, who's to say that this is always a bad thing? It could also create even more potential to get your organization's name out there if there is controversy. As they say, sometimes any press can be good press.

Unknown said...

Wow Kristin has a really good point, could you imagine the video wars that could start the way that YouTube has the video response option?! James has a good point too, monitoring YouTube would not be a fun job, it's a beast, and seems almost uncontrollable. But I do think it is useful for companies to you... it's free advertisement, it's relevant in this day and age, it will get spread and shared like word of mouth, and it gets the name and brand out there. Wow, I wonder what company is using youtube well and hasn't faced too many problems with monitoring the responses they get and such...