This is my last blog post for a while and therefore I would like to give an overview of interactivity in Web 2.0. Interacting with your public is your number one job if you are a corporate communicator or public relations specialist. New social media and Web 2.0 help create avenues of reaching these publics. Interactivity relies on a dialogue working between the corporation and the consumers/stakeholders. There are two types of interactivity as defined by the book Public Relations Online by Tom Kelleher:
- Functional Interactivity: focuses on the features and tools for interacting with your public. Examples] surveys, forums, blogs, RSS feeds, wikis
- Contingency Interactivity: describes the process where the sender and receiver in the line of communication have defined roles that are interchangeable. This means that once a message is sent by a company to a consumer, the consumer can send a message back to the company– developing a dialogue.
By interacting with consumers and stakeholders, corporations create and build lasting relationships that hopefully give their company a good reputation and word-of-mouth. With the amount of information that is posted on the Internet, both official and unofficial, it is important that companies know what is being said about their services and products so that they can respond intelligently.
The most important thing to remember about corporate interactivity is that behind all the innovations and gadgetry, at the core the most important thing for a business is their message and that it is being communicated through all mediums they are using. Just because a company can create a blog, wiki, interactive videos, or a social networking account doesn’t mean that it is the best idea. Every company’s social media usage should be determined by a case-by-case basis that emphasizes the corporate business strategy and message.
If you would like to continue learning about new trends in social media and about interactivity, look into Web 2.0 expo’s. The 2009 Expo just took place. Here is a link to the Expo’s blog.
I would love to hear your ideas and closing remarks as to what you think will be in the upcoming future in corporate Web 2.0 interactivity.
Great overview, Lauren! I really agree with your “most important” key idea. I feel like a lot of companies think using all mediums of social media is the way to go because they’re “in” right now. But if a small company doesn’t really have anything newsworthy to say on a daily basis, why use twitter? If there are only 5 people running your business, is a blog really necessary? I’ve found your posts on interactivity to be very interesting and enjoyable and was pleased with what you came up with with your research.
I completely agree with you that social media should be used on a case by case basis per organization. What might work for one company may not work for another. I think it was the lecture that we watched with the author of “Groundswell”, who said: the question companies should really ask is, what do we want to accomplish? If you want to connect a large group of employees together in a community you might want to do employee blogs. Or if you want direct customer service, you might want to use Twitter. It shouldn’t be done just because the competitors have them. Great job on your blog Lauren, I’ve learned a lot about interactivity!
Your blog has been really interesting so far and I completely agree on your points that the core goal behind using all this new technology is not because they are fancy, cool new tools but rather they promote the dialogue between a corporation and it’s stakeholders even better than older methods of communication. I think that in the future it will be even less necessary to have so many tools to “start a dialogue” with consumers. I think that it will become much less of a scary thing for corporations and much more natural. Overall, good job on your blog it was very fun to read!