Communications

Communications

In general there are four elements of communication and those are;1) theme and messages, 2) actions or special events, 3) uncontrolled or controlled media and 4) principles of effective communication. Plans don't always call it "Communication" other terms are, Planning, Execution and Strategy. Social media calls their communication section, programming and their primary strategy is to engage in a dialogue with an online community appropriate to your campaign goals, or develop your own online community. Themes and messages are the way a company engages human interest. An example of this could be a new car commercial, their message is within the commercial when they are showing the different safety features. Next are Actions or Special event(s), in the Public Relations book it talks about soft drink companies and how they let their clients vote online and would win awards, another campaign focused on fan-based flavors and let their fans in on promoting new flavors on Twitter. The next element is Uncontrolled and Controlled media, controlled media can be described as "tactics which PR practitioners maintain control over all aspects of the process". The final element is effective communication there are key elements to this that the book describes and those are: mutuality, propinquity, empathy, risk and commitment. 

After reading several case studies and their communications aspect of their plan, I found that a lot of their information and methods of communication were useful. I looked at internal, community and social media plans, I learned that the community is one of the most important audiences, this research focuses on understanding the client, the reason for the program and the community audiences to be targeted. Community Relations does not focus on all elements of communication because they only need the relevant ones which are 1, 2 and 4. I also learned that the social media case studies would best fit with my personal PR plan, I believe this because its goal is create a compelling story and the product I am evaluating has competition with other similar products. I will focus on the audience and make my message persuasive by reinforcing similarities that the audience has with the product.