Internet in Public Relations

 

Internet (WorldWideWeb), the global information computer network, is a network that brings together a great many local networks. Computers communicating through the Internet may be located thousands of kilometers from one another, all around the globe. The Net has created a new kind of global information space, or Cyberspace.

 

The Web offers the following opportunities:

1, it facilitates the exchange of messages between millions of people within seconds, no matter how far from one another they may be,

2, it provides access to remote PCs containing databases (which can be located on the other side of the globe), and allows to use such databases,

3, it offers various chats one can either subscribe to or create one’s own; chats deal with all kinds of issues, and are often interactive,

4, it allows to receive and send regular news- or press-releases that cover specific topics,

5, it also allows to present establishments, persons, ideas, goods and services as well as to buy and sell goods and services.

 

The Web does not depend on its parts so if one or many of them are destroyed, the whole Net keeps on functioning. Overseen and sponsored by no government or organization, it is a highly decentralized structure which is very hard to regulate.

The debate whether Internet is a mass medium, has been under way in Russia for many years. While as many as one forth of the American population regularly used the Web back in 1999, including E-commerce, virtual offices, universities and the Electronic Government, the Russians are making a much less extensive use of it, with just 3-5% of the total population reckoned among its regular users in 2000, which is, anyway, a growth of 50-70%.

The fact supporting the idea that the Web is a mass medium is that its events are highly popular and visited by a great number of people daily. Some sites (e.g. the Russian Internet-auction www.molotok.ru) are visited by 9000-10000 guests a day, which exceeds the circulation of many local newspapers. Internet is even more of a parallel reality in the US, the home country to such terms as e-citizen, e-business, e-government, e-education, e-commerce (generally, the term meaning any electronic transaction resulting in a certain property right being transferred from one person or entity to another). Andy Grove, ex-President of Intel, said that all companies would have to become Internet ones in the coming five years unless they wanted to go bankrupt. A network called Internet-2 was launched in 1999 which unites 100 American universities via an information highway of the next, super-speed, generation; it was designed by the telecommunications giant MCI along with the American National Scientific Foundation.

In Europe, 5 times fewer people use the net regularly, than in America. This gap will though be much less by 2005, with 210 million users in Europe and 230 in America respectively. That’s why the European Commission launched a new project called “Electronic Europe”. This project is aimed at transformation of the industrial society into the information one by giving every citizen access to the online environment and creating digital literature.

In Russia the situation is much worse. According to the Communications Ministry, there are 10 million PCs in the country, compared with 150 million in the US. Only 8% of Russian families have a PC at home.

There is also a social aspect of the problem. The access to the net depends on people’s income, which means that they should pay for the access to information, knowledge and education. So one of the future tasks is to eliminate this “discrimination”.

More people will gain access to the net soon because advertisers start paying a larger share of the net access expenses. There are companies that conducted experiments to provide free access to the net, such as NetZero, Spinway.com, Free.net, 1^st Up, FreeRide in America, Alta Vista in the UK, UOL in Brazil, in Russia this is Rambler’s FreeNet. It means that the net will work just as television – the income will depend on the advertising market. So accordingly, the more visitors the site has the more money advertisers will pay. E-business people are the most interested in the increase of the net users number.

We all know how important the web has become for our everyday lives; we use it for work and rest, for communicating with friends, for getting the information we need urgently, especially the objective information exchanged by other common people who know that “official sources” often lie and want to help others. Sometimes we ourselves share the information we have with others using the Net. In fact, one can survive in a locked room if one has in it a Web-connected PC and a credit card in his or her pocket - you can buy anything you need for living ordering it all on-line and then just waiting for what you’ve ordered to be delivered. Microsoft and other companies have even carried out such survival experiments; those were highly successful.

 

Many Cyberspace editions provide a lot of information to millions of people daily. Many newspapers, magazines, radio and TV channels have web versions. Advertisers also start to place more advertising materials in web editions, and less in the traditional mass media. The merger between the major Internet provider America Online (AOL) and the Time Warner media giant shows that the Net is growing into a leading contemporary mass medium. This merger will help combine the traditional news potential with the new electronic one offered by the young company AOL.

As both the audience, the information and advertising potential of the Net are growing, it becomes more and more attractive for PR. The system of hypertext cross-references, which the WWW actually is, helps new businesses to promote their goods, services, establishments and ideas, using a wide spectrum of multimedia.

E-marketing is becoming a mass business sphere. The Rosbusinessconsulting company is an example of how information business and E-business may interact. This company’s income comes from e-advertisements placement and also from web-design services. There are sites dealing with a specific good, or service, or market. E.g., Europe-Steel.com provides information on the metals market, including the list of enterprises, the products catalogue, etc.

Advertising firms as well as PR-agencies are also getting their share of the e-market of marketing communications. Such companies as Video International, MagicBox or ADV Group have set up e-promotion departments. ADV offers brand-consulting, media-planning, creative design and direct marketing services on-line.

Internet is currently both a means and a subject of promotion. The forecasts read that e-media and e-books will very soon replace printed materials.

 

A Web-site is an embodiment of the idea of integrated multichannel e-marketing involving the global audience. A site presents a certain establishment, a project, a person, or goods/services. It requires minimal monthly expenses while it allows to generate and distribute worldwide as much information as one can need. Many customers first learn about the company as the browse the net.

A Web-site helps:

to draw the attention of both the target audience and people in general,

to create a positive image,

to increase sales,

to provide customers and partners with technical, service or information support,

to analyze the customers’ behavior, incl. their opinion of the product, motivation, FAQs, etc..

PR-experts as well as marketologists regard a Web-site as a system of information blocks and interaction tools. Every site has PR features, the aim of which is to attract the target audience, such as the site’s structure, its content and presentation of the content, as well as feedback methods.

The site must catch the eye immediately – otherwise the visitor will just click another reference, which is probably a competitor’s. The content is supposed to be personalized, meaning that every guest can choose how to work with the information, and in which succession. E.g., www.Amazon.com asks visitors both about their search criteria and the way they would like to have the results presented on their screens.

The site information must be up-dated regularly. The more often it happens, the more interest the site arouses and the more users visit it. Forum sites (www.duma-sps.ru, www.yabloko.ru) allow their visitors to take part in such up-dating; everything you send automatically appears on forum pages. On the other hand, a lot of stuff sent by anonymous users may be false information or simply something indecent.

The Web helps PR-people to communicate and interact with the audience, instead of just distributing the materials as it was done before. So a Web-site is an interactive means of PR communication. Such interaction, or dialogue between an organization and the audience offers a number of advantages, such as a possibility to improve the company’s image and raise its accountability to the public, easy analysis of public opinion and identification of development directions which promise most prospects.

The interactive environment means, first of all, that a site must publish the information which vitally interests its visitors and can lead to discussion. For example, this can be the information about investors, corporate programs, the company’s participation in the local and professional communities’ life, etc. The next step is to open a forum, or chat, for the instant exchange of comments, opinions and suggestions. Chat-rooms also serve to provide visitors with an immediate reply of the company’s representative, especially as far as technical support or offering a certain service are concerned. The next step is special-topic discussion groups (focus-groups) which help PR-experts to get feedback on particular problems. For example, the British Airways supports a special interactive site on medical problems of air-flights, including the fear to fly. Such sites also contain answers to FAQs.

Computer companies have the most interactive sites. Certainly an on-line chat where a good, service, technology or the company’s relationship with the community and investors are discussed means the highest interactivity level. But more sites just feature a certain feedback reference which, when clicked, leads you to a questionnaire you must fill in. A third of all sites have no means of direct interaction.

Any e-chat must have a moderator who is usually a PR-expert. The moderator provokes a discussion, encourages the visitors to participate and monitors the chat. On the other hand, the moderator’s presence must not be felt. Every chat participant must feel absolutely free; otherwise the company will miss a lot of valuable and important information. The moderator’s tasks are the following:

to provide public interest information,

to ensure a large and stable audience,

to respond to the visitors’ information and questions,

to ensure the confidential character of discussion, and

finally, to use the public opinion for working out and implementing corporate programs and the company’s policies in general.

The moderator encourages repeated visits, arranges events (such as competitions, polls, brainstorms), finds volunteers to improve the site’s information resources. He/she is also in charge of mailing lists, replying to messages, advertising desks, on-line voting, and so on.

The company’s Web-site is directly connected with its management, marketing and logistics strategies, its relationship with the employees, suppliers, customers and competitors. A successful PR-manager can turn a well-visited site into a powerful tool for improving the company’s business and its internal organization. The public wants to communicate, and the PR people must listen and use what they hear to their company’s benefit.

Finally, the ultimate step to an all-embracing corporate business is the so-called corporate information portal integrating the corporate information with the Web resources and involving the public, employees, partners, investors, and others.

As you see, WWW has become a very important PR tool now and in future it will replace almost all the other ways of communication. Why? Because it gives best opportunities for the two-way symmetrical communication.