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Facebook in Public Relations

Lauren McGonigle & Carly Fried

Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications

COMM 473: Public Relations Campaigns

Renea Nichols

February 10, 2020

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Abstract

The social networking site, Facebook, is utilized for many different purposes but plays a crucial role in Public Relations. This article leads you through the , some of its advancements and milestones throughout the years, and how it utilized by many different people globally. We then explore different campaigns where Facebook’s platform has been able to help enhance campaigns and make them successful.

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Facebook in Public Relations Introduction

Facebook is a platform that was started in 2004 with the goal of connecting friends and family, building communities and businesses. A user has the ability to post statuses and updates about what they feel is necessary. Pages have also been created for companies and businesses that allow them to connect with their clients and customers through a social media outlet. Through the years Facebook has grown to become one of the largest social media platforms in the world. They have over 2.45 billion worldwide. From a business standpoint, Facebook is a tool that can be extremely helpful and beneficial when it comes to public relations. Companies and businesses have a platform to promote their news on a site that is more interactive with the consumer.

History and Description of Facebook

Facebook is one of the many social networking sites that have emerged over the past few years in the digital world. Facebook, originally called Thefacebook.com, was created on

February 4, 2004, by 19-year-old Harvard student, for students at Harvard

University in , . His fellow classmates , and also were co-founders (Freberg, 2019, p.13). It began as a platform for students to create a profile page with personal information and stay connected with people at colleges and universities. Zuckerberg ran the Web service in his college dorm room, and over time, began to add other American universities to the network. According to Brügger, the web service originally was created by, and for, young students. Other students at universities across the country were introduced to the platform and were encouraged to create ideas and make FACEBOOK IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 4 suggestions that would develop Thefacebook.com into the platform we know today (Brügger,

2015). Thefacebook.com changed its name to Facebook in September 2005 and began to grow extremely fast, even expanding globally.

“Thefacebook was apparently addictive from the very beginning: ‘I have a new addition.

It is powerful. It is disturbing. It is thefacebook.com’ the editorial page of the 34th Street

Magazine, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported on March 25, 2004” (Brügger, 2015,

Section 2).

The original purpose of Facebook was for educational institutions’ students to have the ability to share and create content. Each person registered with Facebook was required to be at least 18 years of age and each user’s profile included personal information and a network of connections to other users. Some examples of information on a user’s profile include contact information, relationship status, political views, personal and professional interests, education status, and birth date.

“Because the users of Thefacebook were socially networking with each other, the user’s

profile information was available to his or her network, which was the most basic form of

sharing on Thefacebook. But about six months after the launch, the sharing options were

extended with the introduction of a so-called “Wall” on each profile page, where users

could post messages for their friends and write on their walls (Brügger, 2015).

One of the popular actions on Facebook in its early years was the action of “poking” your friend to get in touch. Some of the other features of the networking site, to touch upon a few, now include sending direct messages, tagging in a photo, liking a post, reacting with emotions, FACEBOOK IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 5 sharing a post, commenting on a post, creating an event or group, or taking the action to report something that you may not think is appropriate for the public to view.

Advertisements play a major role in Facebook and were introduced to the platform in the spring of 2004. The Facebook advertising feature allows users, and now businesses, to create target a specific audience. But in the early years, according to Brügger, they were not allowed to be posted on an individual’s profile page. Businesses also were not allowed to advertise, or even create a profile at the very least (Brügger, 2015). Today, there is an entire page dedicated to

Facebook advertisements, “Facebook Ads Manager”, that allows individuals and businesses to create, manage, and analyze paid advertisements and create campaigns as they wish. This page also offers analytics that you can examine to make changes and determine how well a campaign is performing.

According to Brügger and Freberg, many other improvements to Facebook including the availability of other languages other than English, the inclusion of younger users, chatting capabilities with , the adaptation of a Customer Support Team, photo and video sharing, live video, Facebook Workplace and “network pages” have emerged.

With these improvements and advancements, it draws more users and according to

Nadkarni, has driven Facebook to be the number one social networking site as of May 2011 with

157.2 million visitors per month (Nadkarni, 2011). The decision a user chooses to join facebook FACEBOOK IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 6 however, varies depending on multiple factors. Below is a graph that shows exactly who is using the platform and a conceptual framework that drives users to Facebook.

(Clement, 2019), (Shao, 2015)

Facebook is one of the biggest players in the game and continues to grow and expand to multiple devices. Facebook launched its mobile App on April 1, 2006, allowing users to access the service on-the-go. In social media, when it comes to the audience, there are different platform channel segments. Facebook, along with and , focuses on the demographics and psychographics of their audience, where LinkedIn considers specifics about places people work (Freberg, 2019, p. 164).

Facebook by some people, is thought to be for the older generations and is not “up with the times” for the Generation Z crowd. However, Facebook has actually acquired some of the other social media platforms viewed as “newer” and bought Instagram in April of 2012 for 1 billion dollars. Shortly after, the company bought WhatsApp in February 2014, and Rift in March 2014 (Freberg, 2019, p. 13). FACEBOOK IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 7

Application in PR

Facebook as a social media platform has added aspects to their app and page that can allow companies to create campaigns that can be extremely interactive with their community.

Through Facebook, companies and businesses are able to put out information to the public in a way that is quick and accessible but still putting out the same information as they would in a more formal press release format.

It is important to know the fundamentals about Facebook. In the world today a significant amount of media is published through these outlets. It is extremely important to be present on

Facebook today so you can be tapped into the industry. It will allow a business or company to learn and adapt to how the younger generations receive their media. It has changed significantly since Facebook first started in 2004 and the platform has been able to stay up to date on the newest trends that have taken over.

The Dove real beauty sketches in 2013 was a campaign that took off on Facebook. Dove was able to use the social media platform as a resource to expand their network. The video they released on Facebook had over 114 million views. At this point in time this video had the most views ever. By using Facebook as the platform to launch this video, Dove was able to expand their audience and get their message out to the world through this amazing social media platform.

A second campaign that was about to use Facebook effectively was Qdoba’s Queso

Showdown. Using Facebook Qdoba was able to make special voting campaigns where Facebook users were able to vote for their favorite queso. As results were coming in from the campaign,

Qdoba was able to update the results live on Facebook as well. This made consumers and voters feel as if they were impacting the campaign and it makes them feel important. FACEBOOK IN PUBLIC RELATIONS 8

Conclusion

In conclusion, companies and businesses utilize Facebook to promote their news and it is more interactive with the consumer. Mark Zuckerberg created a platform that allows engagement, discussion, creativity, and promotion. Especially in public relations, Facebook is utilized to connect with the audience using emotion through its features and unique design of the platform. Advertisers have the ability to manage campaigns and analyze statistics to ensure they are creating relevant content that will resonate with their target audience.

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References

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Clark, J. (2017, November 9). The 23 Best Facebook Marketing Campaigns We Could Find.

Retrieved from https://www.jeffbullas.com/23-best-facebook-marketing-campaigns-find/

Clement, J. (2019, November 20). Global Facebook user age & gender distribution 2019.

Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/376128/facebook-

global-user-age-distribution/

Freberg, K. (2019). Social media for strategic communication: creative strategies and research-

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Kapoor, A. (2014, May 1). How a Mexican Restaurant used Facebook to decide its menu-

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Nadkarni, A., & Hofmann, S. G. (2011, November 26). Why do people use Facebook? Retrieved

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via=ihub#b0335

Shao, Wei & Ross, Mitchell. (2015). Testing a conceptual model of Facebook brand page

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Stampler, L. (2013, May 22). How Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' Became The Most Viral Video

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