Assessing the Use of Twitter by Irish SMEs/Entrepreneurs

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Assessing the use of Twitter by Irish

SMEs/Entrepreneurs as a Practice of the PublicRelations Two-Way Symmetrical Model of

Communication:

A Public Relations Approach.

Name: Cian O‟Regan

Student number: R00020649

Master’s Title: MA Public Relations with New Media

Supervisors: Emmett Coffey & Frank O‟Donovan

Word Count: 18,127

September 2011

Submitted to the Cork Institute of Technology in partial fulfilment

of the requirements for the MA in Public Relations with New

Media.



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Declaration

I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme

of study leading to the award of:

Master‟s Degree (M.A.) in Public Relations with New Media

is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for assessment for any academic

purpose other than in partial fulfilment for that stated above.

Signed……………………………….......................

Date……………………………….............



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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following individuals for their help, support and

encouragement in completing this thesis:

Firstly, I would like to thank Emmett Coffey, Frank O‟Donovan and all the lecturers for

their support and guidance throughout the year.

I would like to thank Conor Mowlds, Joanne Kelleher, Annette Coughlan and all the

staff at NMCI Services for their kindness and understanding during the year.

I would like to thank all interviewees who gave up their valuable time to contribute to

this research. I would like to give a special mention here to Margaret Smith, who helped

me to organise Cork Social Media Day, without which I would have never had the

opportunity to meet such great SME‟s and entrepreneurs in the area.

I would like to thank my classmates for making the last year of college the best yet.

Many thanks must go to the Social Media Awards for giving me the social media bug

by nominating me for an Irish Business Blogging Award earlier this year.

A huge thanks also to Charlie Sheen for short-listing me to be his social media intern

this year (#winning).

I would also like to thank David for being the best tea maker in all of Ireland and also

John for providing the teatime entertainment.

And last but by no means least, a special thanks to my family, especially my mum

Catherine for keeping Tazz (the dog) quiet during the summer while I was slogging

away at the thesis.



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Abstract

There has been an increased interest, in recent times, among academics, public relations

professionals and industry professionals in the importance of social media in the role of

public relations. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the

communication model that suits social media, in particular Twitter, most effectively,

from a public relations point of view.

A qualitative research design was chosen for this study, and the primary method used to

gather the data were six semi-structured interviews with SMEs that had won awards for

their social media work and social media consultants.

All interviewees were chosen because of their knowledge and insight pertaining to the

topic at hand.

The research findings show the communication model that is recommended for SMEs,

using Twitter as a public relations tool. Throughout the research process, the author

learned about the PR benefits that arise from the use of Twitter as a way to engage with

the range of publics that a business possesses.

It can be concluded from the research that there are both advantages and disadvantages

to using Twitter as a communication tool, as it does not yet reach the widest audience

possible online due to the fact that the site is not yet mainstream in Ireland. In addition,

if the site is used incorrectly, the reputation of the company can be damaged.

SMEs in Ireland are experimenting on Twitter and those who are using the right

communication model are, on this site, beginning to reap the rewards of this new

phenomenon.



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Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 1.1 Contextual Overview ............................................................................................... 3 1.2 Research Question ................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Research Objectives ................................................................................................ 5 1.4 Overview of Chapters ............................................................................................. 6

Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................. 7 2.1 PR Context .............................................................................................................. 7 2.2 Online PR ................................................................................................................ 8 2.3 The Definition of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) ..................................... 8 2.4 Entrepreneurship ..................................................................................................... 8 2.5 Web 2.0 ................................................................................................................... 9 2.6 Social Media.......................................................................................................... 10 2.7 PR‟s Relationship to Social Media (PR 2.0) ......................................................... 12 2.8 SMEs Using Social Media .................................................................................... 13 2.9 Models of Communication .................................................................................... 14 2.10 Press Agentry ...................................................................................................... 15 2.11 Public Information .............................................................................................. 15 2.12 The Two-Way Asymmetrical Model .................................................................. 16 2.13 The Two-Way Symmetrical Model .................................................................... 16 2.14 Online Communication ....................................................................................... 17 2.15 New Media .......................................................................................................... 18 2.16 Cyberspace .......................................................................................................... 18 2.17 Social Networking ............................................................................................... 19 2.18 Twitter ................................................................................................................. 21 2.19 The Role of Twitter in PR ................................................................................... 22 2.20 Media Relations .................................................................................................. 23

Chapter Three: Methodology....................................................................................... 24 3.1 Definition of Research .......................................................................................... 24 3.2 Research Statement ............................................................................................... 24 3.3 Role of the Researcher .......................................................................................... 25 3.4 Research Design .................................................................................................... 25



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3.5 Research Problems ................................................................................................ 26 3.6 Qualitative VS. Quantitative Research? ................................................................ 27 3.7 Research Sample ................................................................................................... 28 3.8 Interviewees and Positions .................................................................................... 29 3.9 Ethical Considerations .......................................................................................... 29 3.10 Codes of Practise ................................................................................................. 30 3.11 Primary Research ................................................................................................ 30 3.12 Data Collection Methods .................................................................................... 31 3.13 Question Wording ............................................................................................... 31 3.14 Secondary Research ............................................................................................ 32 3.15 Interview Transcribing ........................................................................................ 32 3.16 Semi-Structured Interviews ................................................................................. 32 3.17 Problems with Interviews .................................................................................... 33 3.18 Online Interviews ................................................................................................ 33 3.19 Data Analysis ...................................................................................................... 34 3.20 Reliability ............................................................................................................ 35

Chapter Four: Research Findings and Analysis ........................................................ 36 4.1 Public Relations .................................................................................................... 36

4.2 Views of Social Media .......................................................................................... 37 4.3 Advantages of Using Social Media for SMEs ...................................................... 39 4.4 Two-Way Communication: Interaction ................................................................ 41 4.5 Two-Way Communication: Understanding .......................................................... 42 4.6 Two-Way Communication: Changing a Product/Service ..................................... 43 4.7 Two-Way Communication: Building Relationships ............................................. 43 4.8 Two-Way Communication: Respect Gained ........................................................ 44 4.9 Suggestions on how to effectively use Twitter ..................................................... 45 4.10 Ranking Social Networks .................................................................................... 47

Chapter Five: Conclusions and Recommendations ................................................... 49 5.1 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 49 5.2 Research Question 1 .............................................................................................. 50 5.3 Research Question 2 .............................................................................................. 51 5.4 Research Question 3 .............................................................................................. 52



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5.5 Final Words ........................................................................................................... 54

References ....................................................................................................................... 55 Appendix 1 – Letter to Interviewees ............................................................................... 66 Appendix 2 – Research Questions .................................................................................. 67 Appendix 3 – Consent Forms .......................................................................................... 68 Appendix 4 – Interview Transcripts ................................................................................ 76



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Chapter One: Introduction

The Internet is a relatively new medium. On the Internet, people tend to behave

differently than they would in their normal lives.

A new dimension of human computers has come about as a result of the advancement of

online networks. The “cyberspace” that these networks exist in is understood to be a

psychological space.

When users log on to social media, they often feel “consciously or subconsciously – that

they are entering a „place‟ or „space‟ that is filled with a wide array of meanings and

purposes”. Social networks are often described as extensions of people‟s minds and

personalities – a "space" that reflects their tastes, attitudes and interests. As people

interact on social networks, some people feel as though their minds are “merged or

blended with that of the other” (Suler, J., 1996).

Online engagement does not suit every type of business and it is ill-advised to have a

social media presence if your company is involved in any unethical practises as this is

will result in a lot of backlash from the public. Nestlé found themselves involved in a

public relations mess when news emerged that their business practise resulted in the

lives of endangered species becoming under threat. This drew large quantities of

vitriolic comments, viral video parodies and online abuse (Dash, R., 2010).

It is important to remember that, if any company does something wrong, social media is

an open communication channel in which disgruntled customers can voice their

concerns online.

Online-communication.eu (2011) suggests:

“Before you do engage in social media, make sure to question every step and tool at

least twice and make sure one of those is through the glasses of prospective users.”

Twitter is extremely popular worldwide for both personal users and business users

alike; there are over 200 million users across the globe (Chiang, 2011). However,

Twitter has not yet reached a mainstream audience in Ireland. There are 217,845

Twitter users in Ireland (knexsy, 2011) compared to 2,014,100 users of Facebook and

LinkedIn‟s 424,926 users (Hand, 2011).



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I believe that the use of Twitter as a communication channel by SME‟s/entrepreneurs is

in its primary stage and will result in further study when Twitter becomes more

mainstream in Ireland. The reason why Twitter has reached a mainstream audience in

the US is because of the high Smartphone penetration levels in America.

The increasing usage of Twitter worldwide is commonly attributed to the amount of

news stories the site breaks. However, Twitter head Dick Costolo believes that the

“most consistent growth driver has been Smartphone usage levels” (Drum, 2011).

Research company Amárach found that 2012 will be the year in which the majority of

Irish adults will be using Smartphones, and therefore it is predicted that this will directly

correlate to an increase in Twitter users in Ireland in a similar way to how it happened

in the USA (Amárach, 2011).

The value of Twitter as a communications tool can be seen from an interview on

November 8, 2010 with Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications. Damien believes

that Twitter is a much better source of company information than Google. He stated,

“On Google you can rig stuff too easily. I look to Twitter to get company

recommendations because it is a human network and it is the best source of knowledge

for that.”

The Internet has provided access to a number of different platforms for people to

communicate and connect with one another. With the advent of social media, both

SMEs and entrepreneurs now have the chance to build and to develop relationships

online. Social media has become an invaluable communication channel for businesses.

Relationships are changing and there has been a change in the way traditional media

relationships are formed.

SMEs are slowly adapting and using new technologies like Twitter as a means of a freecommunication tool (Bhasin, D. 2009). In a survey on how SMEs use Twitter (Source:

O2 Survey), 100% of participants stated that Twitter was the best free communication

tool available to their business. 42% of respondents believed that Twitter was a great

way for SMEs to stay in touch with their customers and the needs of their suppliers. The

listening aspect of Twitter was also said to be a great feature of the site with 32% of

SMEs reporting that they use the site to monitor the industry. 28% liked the fact that

they could stay in constant contact with their businesses partners and felt that the sitewas a great way to build a relationship.



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1.1 Contextual Overview

Communication in the twenty-first century has dramatically transformed how human

beings interact with each other.

It is heavily debated whether these new modes of communication and social networks

are making us more social or antisocial (Killian, M., 2009).

Nowadays, people regularly interact on mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,

Skype and through email. These technological advancements have resulted in a

paradigm shift in communications. As Smartphone and Blackberry users grow in size,

this has led to an “always on” culture (Smith, D., 2008).

In the past, written correspondence or face-to-face interaction was the only method of

communication. The advancement of the telephone gave people an entirely new way of

interacting, but this was still confined to a landline (Fredrick, H., 2011).

Mobile communication has allowed people to communicate to anyone, anywhere and at

any time. Mobile communication has provided people with a quicker and more efficient

way of socialising; in Ireland, this is especially popular among young people and those

in the media industry. However, mobile communication has led to people struggling to

disconnect from constant personal and work communication.

Communication is now a lot less dedicated and does not flow as well as before, as there

are now gaps and pauses while the sender waits for the recipient to respond (Killian, M.,

2009).

People are now more trusting of people online and there has been a big increase in

meeting people online. Ten to fifteen years ago, the notion of trusting people you meet

online was heavily stigmatised. The growth in the trust people place in online

connections can be seen by the match.com survey which showed that 17% of all

Americans meet their partners online (Brockwell, D., 2010).

The usage of free online communication channels has dramatically increased in Ireland.

These tools are now extensively used by businesses and they have completely changed

how companies communicate with their publics.



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Smaller businesses tend to be the quickest at adopting the online medium of Twitter.

The ongoing economic situation has forced many smaller businesses to look for cost-

effective communication and customer service channels.

An E-consultancy study has shown that 40% of SME say that they are using Twitter

more than LinkedIn or Facebook, which is testament to both the simplicity and power of

the site (Hird, J., 2011). “The increase in small businesses using converged devices such

as the iPhone and BlackBerry Smartphones combined with the simplicity of Twitter

represents a fantastic opportunity for businesses to further raise their profiles and

increase efficiency” (ibid.).

The evolution of social media is forcing some remarkable changes in the way

SMEs/entrepreneurs conduct their public relations activities. SMEs/entrepreneurs nolonger need third party ink to communicate with their publics – they now have the

ability to influence and persuade their publics through their own online presence. The

popularity of these social networking sites continues to skyrocket. Consider the

following statistics – Twitter now has over 200 million users worldwide (Johansmeyer,

T., 2011) which is approximately one third of the amount of users as Facebook. Every

minute, there are 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube (TopRank, 2010).

The reason why Irish companies are increasingly using Twitter is that it is a great way

to interact with a tech-savvy and influential audience.

Zappos are one of the best companies in the world at using social media to their

advantage. The CEO, Tony Hsieh, and over 190 of their employees are on Twitter

constantly, dealing with customers‟ inquires. Zappos are so committed to managing the

company‟s reputation that they monitor all mentions of the brand online so that their

employees are ready to step in and manage a potential crisis. The open and transparent

mode of communication that they promote has led to them being named sixth in the

“Best Companies to Work For” list (Kirkpatrick, M., 2008).

Many Irish SMEs/entrepreneurs treat online PR as a separate entity to traditional

methods of PR.

SMEs/entrepreneurs are most comfortable with just relying on Web 1.0 sites and do not

see the potential that Web 2.0 sites have for their business. The perceived lack of

control in an online environment is a major factor affecting the use of the Internet in

public relations.



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Social media sites evolve at a massively accelerated rate, with new services being added

very frequently. This means that the available literature in the field of social media is

extremely limited and becomes outdated very quickly.

Due to this fact, the research undertaken by the author will attempt to examine new

literature that is currently being researched on the topic of social media while zoning in

on Twitter.

Since there is also very limited research on the subject of this forum of social media in

an Irish context, the author hopes that this study will represent a pioneering piece of

research.

1.2 Research Question

With this subject still only in the developing stages, it is felt that an opportunity exists to

explore this topic in detail. The evolution of Twitter in recent years continues; however,

the topic of how businesses use it as a communications tool has received less attention

in empirical research by academics. The lack of research in these areas motivates the

present study; the purpose of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of the

opportunities that Twitter possesses for Irish SMEs as a practise of two-way

symmetrical communication from a public relations perspective. This led to the

following questions being formulated:

Is social media an effective public relations tool?

Are there benefits to using Twitter as a communication channel?

What are the ways in which Twitter can be used as a public relations two-way

symmetrical model of communication?

1.3 Research Objectives

The main objective of this research is to discover what model of communication works

best online from a public relations perspective. This research examines how the

channels of communication of SMEs/entrepreneurs are affected by the phenomenon of

social media. It will also examine how SMEs/entrepreneurs benefit from social media

and the research will examine how the two-way symmetrical communication can take

place online. The research objectives can be summarised as follows:

To explore the phenomenon of social media;

To assess the impact of social Twitter as a communication channel;



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To gain an understanding of how Twitter can be used as a public relations two-

way symmetrical model of communication.

It is hoped that information obtained from this research will add to the body of

knowledge available in relation to this topic and it is believed that its findings will

provide an insight for the future study of this subject.

1.4 Overview of Chapters

This dissertation is divided into various chapters and is categorised as follows:

Chapter Two will provide a comprehensive and detailed literature review on the topics

of public relations, social media and Twitter.

Chapter Three will describe and analyse the research methodology chosen for this

study where the research questions and objectives will be answered.

Chapter Four will contain the research findings and analysis. This chapter will outline

the data obtained from the primary data and analyse whether these findings have met the

objectives of the research project.

Chapter Five will draw principal conclusions from the analysis and offer

recommendations for future research.



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Chapter Two: Literature Review

2.1 PR Context

Cutlip et al. (2000: 6) define public relations as “the management function that

establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and

the publics on whom its success or failure depends”.

According to Grunig and Hunt (1994):

“Organizations, like people must communicate with others because they do not

exist alone in the world.”

Grunig and Hunt (1994) believe that organisations must use communication “to

coordinate their behaviour with people who affect them and are affected by them”.

On the other hand, L‟Etang (2008) views public relations as being nothing more than an

industry of propaganda and spin that trades on lies and deceit:

“PR is not „customer care‟ or simply „promotion‟ of the organizational view. It

is about clarity and intellectual honesty based on evidence, not sucking up to

people or being likeable or liked.”

Breakenridge (2008) believes that the PR industry has become caught up in the hype

and spin around it, forgetting that PR is about public relations:

“Public relations is no longer just about audiences.”

She argues that new PR is all about people and relationships.

According to Carty (1992), every organisation has its audiences and therefore cannot

avoid engaging in public relations. The choice is whether or not to use it properly.

Haywood (1991) describes public relations as the craft of projecting the personality of

the organisation. Haywood states:

“The most satisfactory practical definition of public relations is that it is the

management of corporate reputation.”



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2.2 Online PR

Online PR is one of the fastest growing sectors of the online business industry

(Newlands, 2011). Online communication has become ubiquitous in organisational life.

“Internet- based communication has altered publics‟ mobility, communication, and

power relationships and, consequently, transformed identity movements” (Duhé, 2007).

Social media is heavily intertwined with the creation of content, and written content is

still a very large part of this. Traditional PR skills will need to be refocused in order for

new horizons to surface. Online PR is now heavily intertwined with search engine

optimisation (SEO) and there is a strong crossover in these services that are being

offered by the same companies (Newlands, 2011).

2.3 The Definition of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Enterprise Ireland (2007) defines SMEs as follows:

A Small Enterprise is defined as:

an enterprise that has fewer than 50 employees and has either an annual turnover

and/or an annual Balance Sheet total not exceeding €10m.

A Medium Sized Enterprise is defined as:

an enterprise that has between 50 employees and 249 employees and has either

an annual turnover not exceeding €50m or an annual Balance Sheet total not

exceeding €43m.

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are socially and economically important

because they represent 99% of all enterprises in the EU. They provide around 90 million

jobs and contribute to entrepreneurship and innovation (European Commission, 2011).

2.4 Entrepreneurship

Various authors have given various definitions on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.

The general definition is that entrepreneurship is an ability to sense an opportunity

where others only see chaos, contradiction and confusion. It is the know-how to find,

marshal and control resources and to make sure that the venture does not run out of

money when it is needed the most (Mohanty, S.K., 2005).



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A.H. Cole has defined entrepreneurship as the purposeful activity of an individual or

group of associated individuals, undertaken to initiate, maintain, or earn profit through

the production and distribution of economic goods and services (Sharma and Parashar,

2010).

Peter Drucker has provided a very comprehensive definition of entrepreneurship.

According to Drucker, entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

Entrepreneurship is about imagination, flexibility, creativity, a willingness to think

conceptually, a readiness to take risks, the ability to mobilise agents of production and

the capacity to see change as an opportunity (Mohanty, S.K., 2005).

It is widely known that marketing orientation in small firms is characterised by the use

of various contact networks, both formal and informal (Hill and Wright, 2000).

For entrepreneurs, traditional face-to-face networking has been, for a long time, at the

very heart of conducting business and building relationships. However, with the

emergence of online social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, traditional

physical networking events are now being replaced with online platforms that foster

close relationships with other entrepreneurs in the industry.

Online networks can also help an enterprise to improve their business in other aspects

such as brand building, customer interaction and gathering business intelligence

(Business Link, 2007).

2.5 Web 2.0

It is very hard to give an absolute definition for Web 2.0 as a lot of academics have

conflicting views of it.

However, Tim O'Reilly defines Web 2.0 as the understanding that the Web is theplatform and that on the platform, the rules for business are different, and the cardinal

rule is that users can add value to it. O‟Reilly believes that figuring out how to build

databases that get better so that more people that use them is actually the “secret sauce”

of every Web 2.0 company (Bhatt, K., 2007).

For a site to be considered a Web 2.0 platform, it must contain a number of

characteristics. The website must have a user-centred design and offer a range of

customisations in the layout of the site. Example of sites that show these characteristics



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would include YouTube, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and folksonomies (Sankar et

al., 2009).

A Web 2.0 website also must have crowd-sourcing capabilities and have content added

to it frequently. It is important for a PR practitioner to note that millions of people are

now getting relevant content from sites such as Blogger and WordPress (TechPluto,

2009).

The idea behind having the Web as a platform is that the Web (rather than a proprietary

network) is the platform on which everything is built and users can control their own

data. The advantage of this is that it provides a service rather than packaged software; it

is cost-effective and scalable. Most importantly, the Web is a harness from which

intelligence is gathered (Solomon et al., 2007).

Additional characteristics of Web 2.0 include a rich user experience, user participation,

dynamic content, metadata, Web standards and scalability (Shah, 2009).

2.6 Social Media

The Public Relations Institute of Ireland defines social media as:

“The technology used to enable an individual reach a worldwide audience in an

instant. Social media such as blogs, wikis and forums also offer readers the right

to reply.”

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) further defines social media as:

“The term commonly given to websites, online tools and other Interactive

Communication Technologies (ICT) which allow users to interact with each

other by sharing information, opinions, knowledge and interests. As the name

implies, social media involves the building of communities or networks,

encouraging participation and engagement.”

According to Solis (2009):

“Social media represents a shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many

model, rooted in a conversational format between authors and peers within their

social channels. Social media is, quite simply, anything that uses the Internet to

facilitate conversations. People now have the opportunity to broadcast their

thoughts, opinions and expertise on a global scale. Social media is empowering



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people to become the new influencers, and it is forcing PR and marketing

professionals to recognise and include these powerful tools in their advertising

and marketing communications (marcom) strategies.”

According to Nations (2010):

“A social media site would be a website that doesn't just give you information,

but interacts with you while giving you that information. Regular media is a

one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on

television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter.

Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to

communicate too.”

Scoble (2007) says:

“Prior to the Web, organisations had only two significant choices to attract

attention: Buy expensive advertising or get third-party ink from the media. But

the Web has changed the rules. Organisations must now understand the new

rules of marketing and PR and develop relationships directly with their

customers.”

Scott (2008) believes that third party endorsements of a company‟s message will steer

people to their site: “Whatever you call it – viral, buzz, word-of-mouse, or word-of-blog

marketing – having other people tell your story drives action. One person sends it to

another, then that person sends it to yet another, and on and on.”

In Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation, Jim Grunig talks

about the relationship between digital media and public relations and about the

opportunities these new technologies present to the public relations profession, such asmaking “the profession more global, strategic, two-way and interactive, symmetrical or

dialogical, and socially responsible” (Grunig, 2009).

Grunig believes that a lot of practitioners do not seem to understand how to interact

properly on social media. In his opinion, they are merely using it as a way to distribute

messages to their publics “rather than as a strategic means of interacting with publics

and bringing information from the environment into organisational decision-making”.



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Grunig states that “for public relations to fully use digital media, practitioners and

scholars must re-institutionalise public relations as a behavioural, strategic management

paradigm rather than as a symbolic, interpretive paradigm”.

Brain Solis thinks that public relations are silos of information and that customers are

more influential than many of the brands on social networks and that engaging with

them is the best way to succeed. Solis believes that social media and Twitter in

particular has the “potential to steer and shape experiences and it is our responsibility to

also steer and shape experiences and the only way to do that is to break down these silos

to get information and humanise it in a way that would show the CEO, if you want to

paint a good experience or if you want a good experience for your customer, here is

their experience today, how can we change that?” (Solis, B., 2010)

2.7 PR’s Relationship to Social Media (PR 2.0)

In the late 1990‟s Brian Solis coined the term PR 2.0 – his theory was based on how the

communications industry in the future would connect with customers directly while still

“working with traditional and new media influencers to reach them”. PR 2.0 came about

long before the theory of Web 2.0 and was inspired by the changes that took place

during the Web boom of the mid 1990‟s (Solis et al., 2009).

SHIFT Communications drew up a “PR 2.0 Essentials” guide in order to educate PR

practitioners on the usage of social media tools (Moss et al., 2009).

Odden says that social media efforts are managed by the public relations department in

many companies because there is an inherent fit between PR and “being social” (Odden,

N/A).

Public relations specialists were among the first people to embrace the power of social

media, and as a result, they are often the ones leading the way in the social space. The

Internet has changed the rules regarding third party endorsements – no longer are there

just traditional means of getting third party press alone. Nowadays, organisations can

develop relationships directly with their consumers (Scott, D.M., 2010).

The emergence of new technologies means that PR practitioners must now engage with

these new online communities in order to get their message across. The futurist, Marc

Prensky, coined the term “digital native” in his 2001 article which appeared in the

academic publication On the Horizon. PR people must work hard to become fluent in



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these new avenues of getting their message across in order to reach a new audience

(Brown, 2009).

Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, believes that while the traditional marketing

theory dictates that a dissatisfied customer will tell ten people; in the new age of social

media, people have the tools to tell ten million potential customers of their bad

experience (Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 2010).

The social media news site, Mashable, conducted a study in 2010 on how social media

is changing the face of PR. 14 PR professionals were interviewed about various

challenges the industry faces (Swallow, E., 2010).

The result of this study showed that although the traditional press release is not dead, if

a press release nowadays does not have a social element to it – it does not have

momentum.

Lindsey Groepper, the Vice President of BLASTmedia, believes that rather than just e-

mailing a press release, “PR people should send journalists to custom landing pages

created just for that specific announcement, contacting them via Twitter with a BUDurl

link to the release, or even direct them to a YouTube video with a message from the

CEO making the specific announcement” (Swallow, E., 2010).

Interestingly, Nicole VanScoten, a public relations specialist at Pyxl, in her contribution

to the study, stated that she gets a much higher response rate when pitching a story

through Twitter. VanScoten claimed that she gets a 50% response rate with email, but

through Twitter, she gets a response rate of almost 100%.

Social media expert Scott Stratten feels that the biggest mistake companies make is

thinking that social media is just another channel for them to push their advertising

message. Stratten believes that social media is indeed a two-way symmetrical model of

communication as it is “a conversation, not a dictation” (Stratten, 2011).

2.8 SMEs Using Social Media

There is a hierarchy for SMEs when starting off a social media campaign which is

similar to Maslow‟s Hierarchy of Human Nature. It is advised that one should master

each stage on the pyramid before progressing on to the next stage. The very top of the

pyramid has microblogging sites like Twitter, and engagement through these will be

minimal unless one is savvy with blogging and social bookmarking sites (Jantsch, N/A).



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In a recent report by the office management company, Regus, Irish SMEs are ahead of

Britain and the US in their usage of social media for customer acquisition.

The report stated that social networking had evolved into an essential business tool, as

the majority of businesses in Ireland (76%) agreed that without social media activity,

their marketing initiatives could not hope to be successful (Enright, 2011).

A study conducted by Mashable found that Twitter was the number one social network

that SMEs use with 78% of respondents reporting that they used it. Facebook came in

second place with an SME usage of 75%. In this study, Twitter was also named as the

best medium for SMEs to interact with their audience, with a score of 50%, compared to

47% for Facebook (Swallow, 2011).

2.9 Models of Communication

To understand how social media is used as a two-way symmetrical model of

communication, it is important firstly to fully understand Grunig and Hunt‟s four

models of communication.

Since its introduction in 1984, the four-model theory of how PR communication should

work has grown in acceptance to become the basis of the practice, measurement and

ethics of modern PR (Paarlberg, B., 2010).

Until the mid-1990‟s, the four models of public relations were widely researched in a

variety of professional settings (e.g., agencies, corporations, government agencies), in

public relations specialisations (e.g., fundraising, public diplomacy), and in countries

around the globe.

Research on the models helped to fuel the development of the field‟s Excellence Theory

and is referenced as a precursor for many of the organisation-public relationship studiesfilling the discipline‟s journals today (Cameron, Cropp and Reber, 2001; Grunig &

Grunig, 2008).

Grunig and Hunt‟s models have fallen out of favour with public relations scholars in

recent years (e.g. Laskin, 2009; Sha, 2007) but they still continue to be featured

prominently in the discipline‟s leading textbooks.

Communication may be managed in several ways, depending on the culture of the

organisation and the way the organisation looks at the world. Grunig and Hunt



15

identified four models of public relations that have been practiced in the history of

public relations. They use the term “models”, by which they mean four typical ways in

which organisations practice public relations. Some of these “models” of public

relations are more effective than others. However, some are also more ethical (Grunig

and Hunt, 1994).

2.10 Press Agentry

The press agentry and public information models are “always one way, from

organisation to publics”. Practitioners of these two models generally view

communication as telling, not listening. In the early twentieth century, the goal of the

press agentry model was to raise large sums of money in a short period of time by

bombarding the public with sure-fire methods and recruiting scores of volunteers tosolicit funds (Bongila, 2003).

Press agentry is an example of one-way communication, with the main objective of

putting forward one particular view of the world through the media and through other

channels (Tench and Yeomans, 2009). An SME using Twitter as a method of press

agentry communication would only see the site as an extension to their marketing

efforts and not use it for its main benefit which is two-way communication.

Allan (2005) says that press agentry was generally seen as the practice of ensuring that

the appearance of individuals and events in the newspaper was in the most favourable

light. Much like advertising, press agentry was involved in the puffery and exaggeration

of the significance of a particular event or personality for its greater impact on the

public.

2.11 Public Information

The public information model differs from the press agentry model in that it is “the

dissemination of accurate information” (Jo and Jung, 2005:27). It is a one-way channel

of communication but the focus here is on truth rather than on persuasion.

The founding practitioner of the public information model was Ivy Ledbetter Lee.

Terence O‟Brien of the British Broadcasting Corporation commented on Lee‟s use of

this model, pointing out that the American press regarded his successful raising of the

once humble vocation of press-agentry to the status of a conspicuous profession with no



16

little jealousy and dislike.” The newspapers found Lee‟s work an important source for

facts but disliked receiving “information selected and edited by him” (Burton, 2010).

2.12 The Two-Way Asymmetrical Model

According to Grunig (1992), the asymmetrical model may be unethical as it is “a way of

getting what an organisation wants without changing its behaviour or without

compromising”.

The distinction between two-way asymmetric and two-way symmetric approaches to

public relations was developed by James Grunig and Todd Hunt in their 1984 book

Managing Public Relations and was subsequently promoted in Baskin and Aronoff's

Public Relations: The Profession and the Practice and in journal articles. However, it

did not gain widespread attention until Grunig and his colleagues spotlighted it at the

IABC Excellence Study in the early 1990‟s. The preliminary reports of the IABC

Excellence Study, published in 1992 under the title of Excellence in Public Relations

and Communication Management and edited by James Grunig, suggested that virtually

all companies which had reputations for excellent communication practices used the

two-way symmetric approach (Turney, 1998).

2.13 The Two-Way Symmetrical Model

The unbalanced asymmetrical model is all about trying to change the public‟s

perception, while the symmetrical model attempts to achieve balance by adjusting the

relationship between the organisation and its publics by focusing on conflict resolution

in an effort to negotiate a mutually beneficial outcome (Dozier, Grunig, and Grunig,

1995: 41; Grunig and Grunig, 1992: 289).

According to Grunig and Grunig (1992), the two-way symmetrical model is not only the

most ethical approach to public relations, but this ethical approach is also the “model

most effective in meeting organisational goals”.

In two-way symmetrical communication, the focus is not on communication, but rather

on the aim of nurturing and maintaining relationships with publics (Botan and Hazelton,

2006).

James Grunig (1989) describes the two-way symmetrical model as “public relations

efforts which are based on research and evaluation and that use communication to



17

manage conflict and to improve understanding with strategic publics” (Grunig et al.,

2007).

The two-way asymmetrical model has persuasion as its purpose by way of two-way

imbalanced communication (imbalanced because it favours the organisation). Formative

research and the evaluation of attitudes are examples of research being done according

to this model. Grunig and Hunt (1984: 22) mention Edward Bernays as a historical

example of this model and they conclude that it is usually practised in competitive

businesses and agencies. They estimate that 20% of the market follows this model (du

Plessis, 2000).

Two critical points that Grunig makes are that, “By and large, organisations practice

symmetrical public relations when the CEO understands its value and demands it andthe senior communicator, and his or her communication staff have the knowledge to

supply it” (Pierce, 2009).

The two-way symmetrical model is a form of two-way communication which is a way

of promoting respect between the organisation and its public(s) (Grunig and Hunt,

1984).

A study undertaken by CIPR member Michelle Newton to determine the value of social

media and two-way symmetrical communications for building B2B (business-to-

business) stakeholder relationships in the logistics sector had some interesting findings.

55% of respondents believed that there are real communications and business

opportunities when using social media to build stakeholder relationships. What is

interesting to me for my study is that comments that came from this research suggested

that two-way symmetrical communication would be more effective for B2C (business-

to-consumer) interactions (Newton, 2010).

2.14 Online Communication

According to the UK Government, in the foreword to A New Future for

Communications:

“Our world is changing, and communications are central to this change. Digital

media have revolutionised the inf ormation society.”

Social media represents a shift for public relations practitioners to practice the two-way

symmetrical model. The process shifts to conversation-based interaction, which



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cultivates relationships, strengthens customer service and increases brand recognition

and loyalty (Solis et al., 2009: 92). These new media have the potential to make the

profession more global, strategic, two-way and interactive, symmetrical or dialogical

and socially responsible (Grunig, 2010).

Ullman developed a theory called computer-mediated communication (CMC) which

refers to how humans behave differently when they interact online with each other. The

communication channels of immediate (face-to-face) and mediated (online) differ

greatly. Whenever there is an obstacle in the way of communication – e.g. a computer –

the message become less personal (Grunig, 2010).

Reid (1991) claims that there are three types of CMC systems: e-mail, news, and chat

programs. Twitter in this case would be considered to be a chat program. A chat program “transmits one person's typing directly to the monitor of another person or

group of people”. Chat programs occur at the same time and challenge the conventional

understandings of the differences between the written and spoken word. On the other

hand, email and news are asynchronous messages that can be private or public, created

at varying times which allows the receiver time to contemplate their response.

It is important to remember that discussions online are more likely to occur amongst a

group of people with some shared personal or professional connection and not between

a group of strangers that happen to be on the same network (Bainbridge, W.S., 2004).

2.15 New Media

One of the ways in which the Internet has become so central to contemporary media is

how its symbiotic relationship with media culture has offered audiences participatory

opportunities (Lister et al., 2009).

One of the most vital characteristics of new media is the way in which it integrations

telecommunications, data communication and mass communications all into in a single

medium (Dijk, 2006).

2.16 Cyberspace

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cyberspace as “space perceived as such by an

observer but generated by a computer system and having no real existence” (Images

Publishing, 2001).



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Bromberg (1996) believes that in the future, cyberspace may assist users in transferring

or altering their sense of self.

Identity may be fluid and potentially multiple on the Internet but Kendall (1999) argues

that people similarly engage in these practices in real life and did so prior to the

existence of the online forum.

(Mann and Stewart, 2000: 210) believe that “contrary to earlier thought, it is now

believed that the differences between self-presentation in real life and online is far less

divergent than was previously expected”.

The continuous use of the term “cyberspace” has led to the belief that it is an

“independent reality” (Kendall, 1999).

If the theory of cyberspace was that it was more of a “connected space”, this would

allow “recognition of the fact that individuals exist online and offline simultaneously”

(Kendall, 1999: 60).

This allows for the exploration of “how participants may blend the two and the possible

effects of offline context on participants' online experience” (Illingworth, 2001).

2.17 Social Networking

According to M.A. Lüsted (2011), most people mistakenly believe that online networks

did not exist before the twenty-first century. However, as far back as the 1980‟s, people

could communicate through electronic bulletin board systems (BBS‟s). These sites were

free and were operated by computer hobbyists, and allowed users to post information

and to engage in discussions.

According to Lytras et al. (2009):

“Enterprises are being transformed from an old business model built around the

command and control aspects information management to a new one where

collaboration and social networking are the essential components in defining a

long term-business value.”

P.A. Rutledge (2008) believes that social networking is just one component of what is

called Web 2.0, the next generation of websites and services that emphasize

collaboration and connectivity.



20

Although the experts continue to debate the exact definition of Web 2.0, one thing is

certain: social networking sites, blogs and wikis are connecting the online world like

never before. Web 2.0 has changed the way the world connects and communicates, and

the evolution is continuing (Lytras et al., 2009).

Rheingold‟s book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier is

cited in Lievrouw et al. (2006) which states the following:

“People in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries

and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce and exchange

knowledge. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in

real life, but we leave our bodies behind.”

SMEs can use social networks like Twitter to interact with their publics, form mutual

understandings and build relationships with their customers.

According to Solis and Breakenridge (2009):

“Social networks are becoming primary mechanisms for connecting with people,

ideas, brands, news and information, representing the ability to spark

conversation with people directly, as well as those that influence them in new

and unique ways.”

Social networking sites have seen a tremendous growth in the last two years, attracting a

varied and engaged audience. Social networking empowers the 21st century consumer

to choose what is newsworthy and relevant to them (Breakenridge, 2008).

Lisa Hoover of PC World believes that it is possible that these social networking tools

are “ just the beginning of something, that they could lead to ways of finding and

interacting with one another like we never imagined...” (Lüsted, M.A. 2011).

Seth Godin believes that aggressive networking, whether online or in real life, is

worthless. Godin thinks that the networking that matters is helping people to achieve

their goals “reliably and repeatedly so that over time, people have an interest in helping

you achieve your goals”. Most importantly, Godin points out that “superficial friending

doesn‟t count for anything” and is a complete waste of time, as that is not what

networking is all about (Debbieweil, 2008).



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2.18 Twitter

According to Stelzner (2009), Twitter is a micro-blogging service that has quickly

become the social media service that is most often used in strategic communication

campaigns. Similar to blogging, Twitter is a real-time network that allows users from

across the globe to share information through private and public messages capped at

140 characters. The site-imposed character limit allows users‟ updates, or “tweets”, to

be sent to cellular phones and other mobile devices as a text message.

According to Waters (2011):

“The ability to communicate in real-time short messages has garnered

significant attention from individuals and organisations.”

Bell (2011) believes that:

“It‟s a given that Twitter will help build relationships with customers,

communicate with them and develop a brand.”

Solis (2009) says that:

“Twitter connects people through a rich and active exchange of ideas, thoughts,

observations, and interests in one, highly collaborative and promising

ecosystem.”

Twitter is at the heart of the Web‟s evolving ecosystem and its archetype is powerful

and quite understated. For better or for worse, Twitter introduces the notion of

popularity, whereby the numbers of followers and also the friend-to-follower ratio we

possess indicate one‟s stature within “Twitterverse” (Solis, 2010).

The Twitterverse advances micro-interaction and connections through an expandingnetwork of applications, engendering the potential for macro reach and resonance online

and IRL (in real life) (Solis, 2009).

Idugboe (2010) believes that Twitter is a far more open social network than Facebook,

as the latter has often been publicly blasted for its “walled garden” approach. Twitter‟s

key functionality is that it is a source for spreading a business message as quickly and as

far as possible. Since Twitter has “fantastic integration capabilities”, business messages

can spread to the majority of the other social networks instantaneously. Twitter is a

much more business minded network than Facebook, as all interactions on a Facebook



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business pages can be seen by all, whereas “Twitter promotes one to one dialogue

between a business and a customer”.

Weinberg (2009) believes that Twitter revolves around personal relationships, which are

key to communicating effectively on Twitter as the most important users are those who

“engage in facilitating and building friendships”. Using Twitter as a listening tool is one

of the best ways to monitor the public perception of a business online. The business can

then engage with their customers by providing instant customer service.

Twitter has become an infinite well of incredible insight and intelligence and because of

that, it is already an indispensable service to businesses, governments, educators, and

anyone who is impacted by the words and impressions of others (Solis, 2011).

Van Grove (2010) believes that Twitter is all about communication with customers in

an effort to build a relationship with them. In a neuroeconomic study conducted by Dr.

Paul J. Zak, it was found that tweeting results in increased oxytocin levels in humans.

Oxytocin is the hormone produced in the brain that stimulates feelings of trust and

security, and also reduces anxiety levels. Dr. Zak‟s research “interpreted tweeting as if

you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy f or”.

2.19 The Role of Twitter in PR

One of the fastest-growing industry segments on Twitter right now is the public

relations profession (Thomases, 2010). Twitter is now a hub of knowledge for

journalists in Ireland. Recent statistics speak from themselves as 71% of Irish journalists

use Twitter as a news source (Luke, 2011). Twitter is a great place for SMEs to go and

seek out third-party endorsement for their company (O'Reilly et al., 2009). With

Twitter, SMEs have the unique opportunity to engage in two-way communication with

their audience in a way that is “not possible with any other communication channel”

(O'Reilly et al., 2009). A company‟s Twitter account can help build trust among

journalists towards their company if engaging messages and blogs are posted about the

industry they operate in. They may even find themselves being re-tweeted by

journalists, which is an online endorsement of your message (O'Reilly et al., 2009).

According to Thomases (2010), public relations professionals can use Twitter to help

them to be more knowledgeable about their publics, by using the site as a research

forum. By connecting with local people and new distributers, Twitter can become a new

channel for company messages. There is now a large amount of journalists present on



23

Twitter, so it is a great network to forge a relationship with journalists that cover the

industry that one is in. A large following on Twitter can help to build a company‟s

professional credibility and their publics will be able to see that they are a trusted news

source by viewing their previous activity on the site.

2.20 Media Relations

Successful public relations depends on effective communication with a wide variety of

audiences, or publics. The most important method of communication is through media

relations and liaisons.

Like public relations in general, media relations is both proactive and reactive. If a

company or an organisation is large enough or newsworthy, the media will be interested

and will monitor its progress and actions. The choice such a company has to make is

whether to seek to work with the journalists or to keep them at arm‟s length. The

advantage of co-operating with the media is that the stories they publish are more likely

to be accurate and sympathetic (Black, 1995).

Social media has completely changed how media relations works and the site at the

forefront of this change is Twitter because of the amount of people in the media

industry who are on the site. There is now a strong focus on building relationships with

the new media gatekeepers such as bloggers and podcasters (Brown, R., 2009).

Dilenschneider (2010) believes the era of social media possesses the biggest

opportunities for public relations practitioners to engage in media relations because

technology now means that people are far more accessible than ever before.



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Chapter Three: Methodology

The aim of this chapter is to discuss and justify the methods of research undertaken in

this study and to explain the rationale behind the use of these methods in order to

provide a framework for the study.

3.1 Definition of Research

Research is commonly misunderstood as the process of gathering information. This is

an incorrect assumption as it is about answering previously unanswered questions or

“creating that which does not currently exist” (Goddard, 2004).

Several experts have defined research:

Clifford Woody states that research is defining and redefining problems, formulating

hypothesis or suggested solutions, collecting, organising and evaluating data, making

deductions and reaching conclusions, and at last carefully testing the conclusions to

determine whether they fit the formulating hypothesis (Kothari, 2008).

D. Sleringer and M. Stephenson, in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, define research

as “the manipulation of things, concepts or symbols for the purpose of generalizing to

extend correct or verify knowledge, whether that knowledge ends in constructions of theory or in the practice of an art” (Kumar, 2008).

Webster‟s Dictionary defines research as a studious inquiry or examination aimed at the

discovery and interpretation of facts, the revision of accepted theories or laws in the

light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws

(Webster, N/A).

3.2 Research Statement

Research questions are created to organise a project and give it direction, to delimit the

project and identify boundaries, to keep the research focused, to provide a framework

for writing up the project and to point to data that will be needed (Punch, 2005: 37).

Within this research, the author wishes to provide an in-depth analysis of how Irish

SMEs use social media as a communication strategy, with an emphasis on Twitter.

According to Alan Bryman (2001), the most appropriate route of research for a

particular project involves firstly selecting a specific research paradigm; next, devising a

research design; and lastly, choosing specific research methods.



25

3.3 Role of the Researcher

The researcher is the instrument of both the data collection and the data interpretation.

Therefore, the qualitative strategy includes having personal contact with the people and

situation the study is based on. From the perspective of the advocates of a supposedly

value-free social science, subjectivity is the very antithesis of scientific inquiry (Patton,

2002).

The choice of the qualitative research designs should be congruent with the following:

The beliefs and worldviews of the researcher; i.e. the qualitative researcher usually

expresses an interest in understanding the social world from the point of view of the

participants in it, and emphasizes the context in which events occur and have meaning;

The nature of the end results desired; i.e. the qualitative research is seeking meaning

and understanding, which is best described in narrative form;

The depth of understanding and description required from participants; i.e. qualitative

research usually involves the exploration of a topic or an issue in-depth, with an

emphasis on seeking information from the people who are experiencing or who are

involved in the issue;

The type of reasoning involved – qualitative research is oriented towards theory

construction, and the reasoning behind data analysis is inductive; i.e. the findings

emerge from the data.

Crabtree and Miller (1992) suggest that the best way to determine whether the choice

of a particular qualitative research design is appropriate is to ask how the particular

topic of interest is usually shared in the group or culture of interest. For example, if

information about how clients responded to occupational therapy treatment is usually

shared through discussion and storytelling among individual therapists, then a

phenomenological approach may be the most appropriate way to study this experience

(Law, M. et al., 1998).

3.4 Research Design

Research design is an arrangement of conditions for the collection and analysis of data

in a method that aims to merge relevance with the research question (Brayman, 2005).



26

As already noted, there is currently a lack of previous studies examining the impact

social media has had on celebrity culture; the majority of studies have focused on

consumers‟ attitudes towards the use of celebrity endorsements. The purpose of this

research is to assess the impact that social media is having on the celebrity industry and

what effect this is having on the PR industry as a whole.

A qualitative research design has been chosen for this research paper, as it has been

pointed out as being the most suitable strategy for exploring new areas of study.

Interviews have been utilised to meet the research objectives.

3.5 Research Problems

It is important that the thesis writer understands how to choose a good research problemand is able to formulate specific objectives to deal with the problem. A good researcher

should be able to comprehend that even the simplest problem can be turned into a good

research question if it is stated in an interrogative form (Calmorin et al., 2007). The

problem area where I will focus on is whether Twitter is a good tool for

SMEs/entrepreneurs to use as part of their PR function. I will also assess which type of

communication model the SMEs/entrepreneurs adopt when using the site.

There are five factors to consider when determining whether a problem is researchable

or not:

The problem exists in a locality but no known solution exists.

The solution can be answered using statistical methods and techniques.

There are probable solutions but they have not yet been tested.

The occurrence of the phenomena requires scientific investigation to arrive at a

precise solution.

The serious needs/problems of people where research is demanded.

My research question fits into the “probable solutions but has not yet been tested”

category. This is because Twitter is still not mainstream in Ireland, so tests on this

medium are limited (Calmorin et al., 2007).

Kerlinger (1986) states that it is important for the researcher to understand that the

research question must be phrased correctly as “questions have the virtue of posing a

problem directly”.



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3.6 Qualitative VS. Quantitative Research?

It is imperative for a researcher to understand that the research method should not be

predetermined. Instead, the research method should be decided on the basis of what you

are trying to find out (Punch, K. cited in Doing Qualitative Research, D. Silverman,

2009).

The researcher has chosen the qualitative research approach as it is the most appropriate

in meeting the needs of a relatively new research area. For the qualitative research

approach, the researcher will need to collect in-depth information to be able to answer

the research questions, which is something that cannot be done if the researcher uses

quantitative methods instead (Creswell, 1994). A particular strength associated with

qualitative research is that the descriptions and theories that such research generates aregrounded in reality (Miles et al., 1994: 10).

Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical

materials including interview transcripts, case studies, recordings and notes,

observational records and notes, audiovisual materials and personal experience

materials such as artefacts, and journal and diary information (Denzin and Lincoln,

2000).

The in-depth interview is a technique designed to get a participant‟s perspective on the

research topic. During in-depth interviews, the interviewee is considered the expert and

the interviewer is considered the student. The techniques used by the researcher are

driven by the desire to learn everything that the participant can share about the research

topic. Researchers remain neutral when asking the participants questions whilst

listening carefully to their responses. They can then ask follow-up questions based on

those responses. In-depth interviews are one of the most common qualitative research

methods. One reason for their attractiveness is that they manage to bring a human

element to the problem under research. In addition, conducting and participating in

interviews can be a rewarding experience for participants and interviewers alike (Mack

et al., 2005: 29).

In between the focused and structured methods sits one that utilises techniques from

both. Questions are normally specified, but the interviewer is freer to probe beyond the

answers in a manner which would appear prejudicial to the aims of standardisation andcomparability (May, 2010).



28

Interviews yield rich insights into people‟s biographies, experiences, opinions, values,

aspirations, attitudes and feelings (May, 2010).

According to Gillham (2000: 10), the advantage of qualitative research is that it can

illuminate issues and turn up possible explanations to a problem.

Qualitative research allows the researcher to share in the understanding and perceptions

of others and to explore how people give structure and meaning to their behaviour

(Berg, 2009).

Furthermore, little has been done by way of qualitative research to understand how

SMEs/entrepreneurs use Twitter and, in particular, little or no research has been carried

out concerning its relation to PR. For the purpose of this study, the research aims to gain

knowledge of the different perspectives that Twitter has on the way SMEs/entrepreneurs

communicate.

3.7 Research Sample

There is an extensive amount of SMEs/entrepreneurs in Ireland. For the purpose of this

study, it was decided to look at the Cork area due to the factors of location and ease.

There are many Cork-based SMEs that are very active in social media. 2011 was the

first year that the Social Media Awards of Ireland was staged. Due to the fact that the

researcher was a nominee of the Social Media Awards, he had an in-depth knowledge of

the cases of social media excellence in Ireland. It was decided that all interviewees

should be organisations that were either nominees or winners of the Social Media

Awards as through the extensive judging criteria involved in these awards, I could

determine who the best companies to interview were. Several award-winning social

media companies and social media consultants were approached by e-mail in which a

brief description of the purpose of the research project and the part the researcher wouldlike them to play in it was provided (Appendix 1). From the respondents, I chose four

SMEs and two social media consultants to interview, based on their expertise in the

area.

The interviews were organised by sending introductory e-mails to the candidates, which

outlined general information regarding the researcher, the topic chosen and the

significance of the candidate‟s participation. After initial contact was made with the

participants, another e-mail followed with interview questions attached for each



29

participant. Telephone calls followed up the e-mails to arrange the interviews at a time

and location convenient to both the researcher and the interviewees.

3.8 Interviewees and Positions

1. Matt Kane, Curious Wines Co-Owner.

2. Margaret Smith, Umnumnum Owner.

3. Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy, Cork Independent Editor.

4. Ciara Crossan, weddingdates.ie Owner.

5. Amanda Webb, Spiderworking Owner

6. Christina Giliberti, CG Online Marketing Owner

Each participant that I chose for my study was picked because of their extensive

knowledge of social media for SMEs. Due to the fact that this study is about focusing in

on Twitter especially, it was imperative that I picked interviewees that were particularly

active and well versed on Twitter. The four SMEs that I interviewed have a combined

following on Twitter of 9,199 people, which is an average of 2,299 followers each. The

total amount of tweets the four SMEs sent between them was 34,154, which is an

average of 8,538 tweets each. It can be seen from this that the users I picked for my

research are experienced users of the sites when you study k nexsy‟s stats that an

average user has 199 followers and has sent 1,178 tweets (knexsy, 2011).

The four SMEs also possessed a very high Klout rating, which is the measure of online

influence across all social networks. All of the SMEs had an online influence rating of

either specialist or higher from the Klout measurement site.

Even though I interviewed the social media consultants because of the social media

expertise they gave to their clients, it was also important for the study that they were

active on Twitter themselves. The social media consultants had a total Twitter followingof 2,080 which is an average of 1,040. They had combined Tweets of 9,596 tweets

which is an average of 4,798 each. The two social media consultants also possess a very

impressive online influence.

3.9 Ethical Considerations

Punch (1994) was cited in Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research: Challenges

and Rewards as saying, “The relationship between the researcher and the respondent in



30

qualitative research raises a number of ethical questions that quantitative researchers do

not usually encounter.”

Schrum (1995: 323-4) was cited in Walking the Tightrope: Ethical Issues for

Qualitative Researchers as saying that researchers should “consider respondents and

participants as owners of the material” and that they should have the right to modify

their quotes for “substance and language” (Van den Hoonaard, 2002).

3.10 Codes of Practise

Social research has a number of professional codes of practise that outline how to

conduct research ethically. These codes include the British Sociological Association,

the British Educational Research Association and the British Psychological Society.

Homon (1991) was cited in Interviews in Qualitative Research as saying that codes of

practise are viewed with caution as they “establish a minimum standard of ethical

practice” (King et al., 2009).

As a researcher, I have the responsibility to explain to respondents as fully as possible

what the research is about and why I wish to interview them. The researcher must also

brief the participant on what is involved in the research and what the information will be

used for. The researcher will follow Bell‟s (2005) recommendation and explain fully to

respondents what the research entails as it is better for the participant to “withdraw at

the start rather than halfway through or after the interview”.

After the interview is completed, the researcher should ensure that participants are fully

informed about the aims of the research and they should also have access to any

publications arising from the study (King et al., 2009).

It is important for the researcher to “maintain confidentiality regarding any information

about participants acquired during the research process” (King et al., 2009).

3.11 Primary Research

The researcher decided to use semi-structured interviews as it was decided that this

method would yield the most suitable data results. The researcher sought to understand

the best ways in which an SME can use Twitter as a communications tool for their

organisation. The researcher decided to interview SMEs which received social media

awards as they were deemed to be practicing social media most effectively among their

peers. The researcher also chose to interview social media consultants that advise SMEs



31

on the best practice in the industry, as they are deemed to be the experts. Flexibility was

required in the interview process due to the fact that the researcher was interviewing

people from different backgrounds. An example of how the researcher changed his

interview would be where the researcher asked the SMEs what they would do whereas

he asked the social media consultants what they would advise clients to do.

3.12 Data Collection Methods

Qualitative data collection methods were used to generate the results for this study,

therefore making it the methodology that best supported the purpose of this study. In

pursuing the qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were chosen as the main

method of primary research.

I arranged interview dates and times with each participant which took place at mutually

convenient locations. Before each interview took place, I informed each participant that

they had the right to anonymity and I also requested their permission to record our

conversation for the study. My interview started by asking them broad questions like,

“What is your understanding of public relations?” and as the interview progressed, we

focused in on the details of the topics of primary interest to the study (Appendix 2).

Also, follow-up questions like, “Could you give me an example of this?” were asked to

get as much information as possible out of the interviewees.

As previously stated, the researcher conducted the interview having previously read a

considerable amount of literature to be suitably informed on areas such as online PR,

communication models and social media. It was hoped that this would allow the

researcher to narrow down themes and questions and also that it would improve the

credibility of the interviewer and help establish trust with the respondents (Saunders et

al., 2003).

3.13 Question Wording

The wording of interview questions is very important to ensure that they are fully

understood by all participants. The answers that respondents give can be a number of

different things to different people – it all depends on how you interpret it. This is the

reason why I prompt the interviewees by asking them, for example, to elaborate on the

topic (Bell, 2005).



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3.14 Secondary Research

A review of all relative secondary data is fundamental for any research. Saunders (2009)

states that most research projects require a combination of both primary and secondary

data in order to answer research questions and to meet the research objectives.

Secondary sources can provide concise summaries of past research and save the

researcher hours of library research (Gravetter et al., 2011). A researcher should start off

with secondary data and then proceed to primary data only when the secondary data

resources have been exhausted (Malhotra and Birks, 2000). There are advantages to

secondary data as it gives you an added insight into the area of study. However, there

are also disadvantages to secondary data because you did not collect the data yourself;

therefore you do not know how it was gathered and how accurate the information is

(Stacks, D.W., 2002)

The secondary sources I studied included books and research published in academic

journals in the CIT Library and the DIT Library. I also heavily researched websites to

gain an understanding of my research topic. I found very little amounts of academic

research done on the area of Twitter as a public relations tool for businesses, but what I

gathered was very useful. The researcher had to be very careful to determine what was

academic and what was not when researching online, as on certain occasions, it was not

fully clear at the first glance.

3.15 Interview Transcribing

This is the process of writing down the contents of the recorded interview word for

word so that you can adequately quote your interviewees. The researcher does their own

transcribing as “it can be seen as the first step in the analysis” and it helps the researcher

to become closer to the data (Langdridge cited in Interviews in qualitative research,

King et al., 2009).

3.16 Semi-Structured Interviews

The researcher knows that a good interview requires an extensive amount of preparation

to make sure that it goes smoothly. Cohen (1976) believes this to be very true and he

likens the process to fishing, stating that “interviewing is an activity requiring careful

preparation, much patience, and considerable practice if the eventual reward is to be a

worthwhile catch”.



33

For my research, I interviewed two different types of businesses – SMEs using social

media and social media consultants. Due to this, I needed to slightly alter my

questioning to fit the type of business I was conducting my interview with. It was for

this reason that I chose not to use a structured interview as it “leaves little room for

deviation from the schedule”.

The focused interview enables the interviewee to answer questions within “their own

frame of reference”. However, “some people might regard this as a licence for the

interviewee to simply talk about an issue in any way they choose” – I chose not to use

this method of questioning for this reason.

A semi-structured interview utilises techniques from both the focused and structured

methods. I used this method in my study and my questions were specified but I was“free to probe beyond the answers” and “seek clarification and elaboration on the

answers given”.

A semi-structured interview is “said to allow people to answer more on their own terms

than the standardised interview permits, but still provide a greater structure for

comparability over that of the focused interview”.

3.17 Problems with Interviews

To control an effective research question, it is important to decide “which sequence to

ask the questions” in. It is the skill of the researcher to co-ordinate the interview in a

logical sequence and if “a question has already been answered en passant it may be left

out” (Flick, 2009).

3.18 Online Interviews

The World Wide Web has opened up new horizons for data collection. Researchers cannow engage in worldwide, low-cost and instantaneous research that is not possible by

using conventional research approaches (Illingworth, 2001). Jones (1999: 12) says that

the Internet provides an irresistible terrain to collect a “seductive data set” which can be

accessed at the touch of a button. The simplest form of an interview that is conducted

via the Internet would be the e-mail interview (Denscombe, 2007).

Nguyen and Alexander (1996) believe that an advantage to an online interview would

be that if it was the researcher‟s first time conducting an interview, it would mean that

the researcher would be less self-conscious and embarrassed while they are conducting



34

an online interview. Online interviews also allow interviewees time for reflection on

and consideration of a question. As the respondent has the freedom to answer the

interview questions as they deem fit, it may result in more thought-out and thorough

answers as the respondent is not asked the interview questions on the spot (Denscombe,

2007). Further benefits of online interviews include a reduction in cost as travel

expenses will be lower (Salmons, 2010).

There are a number of drawbacks to conducting online interviews. The researcher might

not be aware of distractions that are interrupting the interviewee's engagement with the

interview (Illingworth, 2001). The lack of physicality and the reliance on written rather

than verbal communication potentially leads to the loss of important observational

elements and cues vital to the validation of the researcher-respondent exchange

(Illingworth, 2001). In addition, the time lapse can stultify the flow of interaction which

deprives the interview of its natural qualities (Denscombe, 2007). Mann and Stewart

(2005: 159) believe that “the jury is still out with regard to the effectiveness of online

interviewing” in comparison to a face-to-face interview.

One online interview was chosen as a method of primary research for this study as the

researcher was interested in communicating with this particular person who was in a

certain location which made it unfeasible for them to be interviewed face-to-face.

In addition, the researcher considered it necessary to collect data from this participant as

they had an in-depth knowledge of training SMEs in the usage of social media.

3.19 Data Analysis

Grounded theory was chosen as the most suitable method for qualitative data analysis.

Grounded theory was developed by two North American sociologists, Barney Glaser

and Anselm Strauss (Strauss, 1987 cited in Principles of Social Research). Thesesociologists believe that the main aim of grounded theory is not necessarily to “develop

policy-relevant recommendations but to contribute to the theory” (Green et al., 2005).

An important aspect of carrying out a thematic analysis is being able to show how the

researcher developed the themes and structure of the research. It is for this reason that

the researcher kept mind-maps in order to organise the themes throughout the research

(Green et al., 2005). While accessing the transcribed interviews, the researcher

developed a highlighting system where he would highlight sections that were of interest

which he would definitely use and he also highlighted secondary interest areas in a



35

different colour that he would go back to later. The researcher also inserted comments

into the interview document to keep track of themes as they were developing (Green et

al., 2005).

In contrast, in quantitative studies the researcher is an independent observer with a set

of instruments. On the other hand, in qualitative research the researcher becomes an

integral part of the measurement and data-collection experience (Goodwin et al., 1996).

3.20 Reliability

Reliability is fundamentally concerned with issues relating to the consistency of

measures. There are at least three different meanings to the term (Bryman, 2004).

Stability

Stability relates to whether a certain measure is stable over time. This is important so

that a researcher can be confident that the results pertaining to the sample does not

fluctuate.

Internal Reliability

This refers to whether the indicators which make up the scale are consistent. This way,

the researcher can check whether the respondents‟ scores on any one indicator tend to

be related to their scores on the other indicators.

Inter-Observer Consistency

This is to do with a lack of consistency in the decisions the people involved in the

research might make. This could be an issue if the researcher is using someone else to

transcribe their interviews. With this method, there is the possibility of a “lack of

consistency” in the decision-making process.



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Chapter Four: Research Findings and Analysis

The themes addressed in this section aim to identify if SMEs/entrepreneurs in the Cork

area are using Twitter as a source of the public relations theory of two-way symmetrical

communication.

This chapter presents the findings and analysis from the primary research in light of the

research objectives. The findings are supported by quotations taken from the transcribed

interviews. Analysis of the transcripts identified a number of common themes that

developed across the interviews. Data will be discussed in relation to the theoretical

constructs outlined in the literature review and organised according to each primary

research objective.

The three research questions are as follows:

Is social media an effective public relations tool?

Are there benefits to using Twitter as a communication channel?

What are the ways in which Twitter can be used as a public relations two-way

symmetrical model of communication?

The primary research questions are discussed under the following headings:

Public Relations.

Two-Way Communication: Interaction.

Two-Way Communication: Understanding.

Two-Way Communication: Changing a Product/Service.

Two-Way Communication: Building Relationships.

Two-Way Communication: Respect Gained.

Suggestions on how to use Twitter effectively.

Ranking Social Networks.

The headings outline the general themes extracted from the data that came from the

interviews to develop the research findings.

4.1 Public Relations

Firstly, all interviewees were asked what their understanding of public relations was.

This was an important aspect as all of the participants were not from a public relations

background.



37

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum stated, “Public relations for me is all about getting your

name out there in the most positive light possible so that you‟ll eventually get business

as a result of it and also that there is a positive vibe around your name so that people

know you for the right reasons.”

Matt Kane of Curious Wines backed up this statement by saying, “It would be your

whole face, people‟s perception of you, your customer‟s perception of you or your

potential customer‟s perceptions of you. It is trying to communicate your message to the

public.”

Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing believes that there is a difference between

online and offline public relations – “I‟d say offline is more sales based while online is

a little bit more market focused.”

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking believes that social media is an extension of public

relations. She feels that the best public relations campaigns should combine both

traditional media and social media.

Ciara Crossan of WeddingDates.ie believes that public relations is great for creative

SMEs/entrepreneurs who can think of quirky and interesting stories for media as it helps

them to stand out from the crowd.

The literature contends that PR is the management function, through which two-way

communication can seek to develop and maintain mutually beneficial relationships

between an organisation and its key publics. This definition is relevant to the research

findings as they uphold the definition of Cutlip et al. (2000: 6) that public relations is

“the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial

relationships between an organisation and its publics”.

Haywood (1991) had a concept that organisations should treat public relations as “the

craft of projecting the personality of the organisation” and that “it is the management of

corporate reputation”, a view which is strongly supported by Margaret Smith who

believes that PR is about creating a positive vibe around a business.

4.2 Views of Social Media

All interviewees agreed that social media is very important in the practise of PR.



38

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking likens the invention of social media to the advent of

CB Radio, stating, “It allows us to communicate on a wider basis than we have before –

it allows us to connect with people around the world.” Amanda also believes that human

beings are social creatures and the arrival of social media has helped people to satisfy

this desire for social interaction.

Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing believes that social media has a key role to

play in online marketing. Christina believes that there are a lot of benefits from using

social media and she sees a lot of companies gaining business and gaining connections

from it.

Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy of the Cork Independent believes that social media is the

ultimate tool that has infinite possibilities. Although the Cork Independent has had apositive response from engaging in social media, she believes that there are both

positive and negative sides to using social media. Deirdre doesn‟t believe in any form of

censorship as social media is quite self-regulating and a negative comment is normally

drowned out by the masses. Deirdre feels that it is important to set the tone right when

using social media, and that a jolly and friendly approach works best. She says, “If you

set the tone in a positive light, you will see that people will be very reluctant to be

overly critical.” Deirdre thinks that a lot of businesses are afraid of social media for fear

of negative comments. However she feels, “If you can stand over your product and you

are honest about your resources and about what you can and can‟t do, you are on to a

winner.”

Social media is something that Margaret Smith of Umnumnum totally dismissed at the

start, but after learning more about it she “took to it like a duck to water and I never

looked back since”. Margaret believes that having a funny and vivacious personality

lends herself to working well within social media.

This corresponds with the research findings that “social media is rooted in a

conversational format between authors and peers within their social channels” (Solis,

2009).

All participants recognised the fact that social media is no longer just a way of reaching

the youth market, as it now has a very large rate of adult users.



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4.3 Advantages of Using Social Media for SMEs

There was a strong agreement among participants that social media offers a wealth of

opportunities for companies.

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking thinks that social media “is a great leveller”. Amanda

feels that small businesses should look at what big businesses are doing on the front of

social media and find ways to scale it into their own plan. Amanda believes that people

want to know who they are buying from and that social media helps businesses to put a

personality onto their brand. Amanda stressed the opportunity that social media

provided in gaining new contracts for SMEs/entrepreneurs overseas – “Social media

knocks down borders so Irish businesses wanting to export or find customers overseas

can do so easily using social media.”

Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing believes that the main benefits of social

media would be that it opens doors for SMEs and that it is very accessible. Christina

believes, “It is a very open channel – you can drop in any time you need to and you

have got a ready, waiting audience there.” She feels that social media breaks barriers

and puts SMEs on a level playing field with larger audiences. Christina believes that

“smaller companies can be just as successful as the bigger ones on social media”.

Ciara Crossan of WeddingDates.ie views social media as a great tool, particularly for

small businesses, as it is a great way to reach out to “large organisations and make

connections easily”. Ciara points out the media relations benefits that social media sites

possess, such as the ability to pitch to journalists. Ciara believes that social networking

sites can also be pivotal in the management of crisis communication as it is a great,

instant way to respond to customer complaints. Ciara uses social media as an

announcement tool about the latest updates in her company, such as big developmental

changes that may occur in the company.

Matt Kane of Curious Wines believes that social media is great as the Internet is so

democratic and that all of a sudden SMEs can be just as effective as larger companies.

Matt believes that SMEs have the potential to do better than the larger companies in

social media because they are more nimble, more flexible and can adapt that bit quicker

than the bigger companies. Matt likens the adaptability of SMEs to the Honda

commercial where the tagline is, “It‟s not like I don‟t think that leadership is a goodthing but you get the best out of people when there isn‟t a manager looking over our



40

shoulder.” Matt also stresses the importance of the reach that social media can have for

SMEs – “It‟s not just a case now of where you open up one retail outlet and concentrate

on a 20-mile radius. What it does is it gets up in a mindset where you‟re not just looking

locally.”

Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy, of the Cork Independent believes that the opportunities for

SMEs using social media are “massive”. She believes that the main thing it does is that

it “builds brand awareness for the company”. Deirdre points out that there are a lot of

brands, particularly in Cork, that have really come alive though social media.

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum believes that the opportunities for SMEs in social media

are “huge”. She feels that it‟s a great way to “dip your toes in the water without taking a

risk ”.

All participants recognised that SMEs can be just as successful as larger companies on

social media.

One participant upholds the belief that the larger you grow your online presence, it will

result in the company needing traditional media less and less. The participant believes

this because if you have a large engaged audience, they are likely to share your message

for you on their own social media sites. The participant believes that this can result in

there being little difference to announcing something online compared to making an

announcement in a local newspaper. This is in line with Scott (2008) who says that

“having other people tell your stories” results in your content becoming viral in nature.

The participant also noted that this has led to a decrease in SMEs sending press releases

to traditional media as they are happy with the coverage they get from their social media

sites.

According to Scoble (2007), before the Internet came along, organisations had only twosignificant choices to attract attention: to buy expensive advertising or to get third-party

ink from the media but now the third option, social media, has created a very attractive

way for SMEs to attract attention. One participant stated, “Nowadays SMEs that are

entering the market cannot afford to spend a lot of money on advertising if it yields little

return. Whereas now, you can have customised Facebook landing pages which display

all of your more recent offers for all of your new followers to see.”



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4.4 Two-Way Communication: Interaction

When asked if Twitter was the best social media site to interact with their businesses

audiences, there was an overwhelmingly positive response rate from the participants,

with only one respondent saying that they felt that Facebook was better for interacting

with their publics.

The editor of the Cork Independent, Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy, said that Twitter is still

mainly used by media people while Facebook is the best way to interact with the people

on the street.

However, Margaret Smith of cookery school Umnumnum believes that Twitter would

be the better medium because of the interactive nature of the site. She feels that with

Facebook, you have to constantly check who is interacting with you. Margaret points

out a very important tip of Twitter etiquette to use when interacting with customers – “If

someone talks to you, you answer them back, just like if someone walks into a room

and talks to you, you wouldn‟t just ignore them.”

Matt Kane of Curious Wines says that the best way to interact with people on Twitter is

to just be yourself and to try and become friends with people as opposed to becoming

someone who is just trying to sell something on it.

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking would rank Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as her top

three social media websites. Amanda believes that Twitter is brilliant for

communication. She believes that it is a great way to form new relationships that she

likes to either take offline or on to a more stable network like Facebook.

Ciara Crossan of WeddingDates.ie uses Twitter as more of a B2B communication tool

whereas she interacts with her customers on Facebook.

The findings strengthen the analysis of Solis et al. (2009: 92) who indicate that social

media represents a shift for public relations practitioners to practice conversational two-

way symmetrical communication. This results in strengthened customer experiences

and cultivated relationships.

The participants also identified a number of potential disadvantages to using social

media. The main concern for them was that if they posted something that a section of

their followers might disagree with, such as voicing their opinion on a current news

story, it could impact negatively on their business.



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4.5 Two-Way Communication: Understanding

The resounding theme that becomes apparent from this question was that

communication on social sites help organisations to understand the views, needs and

wants of their publics.

Ciara Crossan of WeddingDates.ie believes that social media has helped her to engage

and educate her customers in an entirely different way from what was possible before.

Ciara often finds other SMEs asking her for advice as she has positioned herself as an

expert in her industry and also as somewhat of a social media expert considering the

large following she has.

When asked whether the use of Twitter can help businesses to understand their publics,

Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing feels that while in the past, businesses had

to outsource their market research, now “they can do it directly” through this medium

and they can “gain very useful information”.

Matt Kane of Curious Wines feels that sites like Twitter and Facebook aid with

feedback that he already receives in his store – “You would have people asking about

some particular wine on Twitter and Facebook and then you would notice that people

will start asking for the same wine in the shop and it‟s then you realise that it‟s time we

started bringing some of that wine in.”

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum likes to test out ideas on social networks to “gauge

people‟s reactions about things and then decide whether it‟s a good or a bad idea” for

her business.

Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy of the Cork Independent thinks that Twitter is a good medium

for her company to interact with their business audience on, as people on Twitter are

usually the type of people that write letters to the editor anyway. Deirdre feels that what

they learn from Twitter can help shape the paper as she says, “We might be puffing

away on a local issue like St. Mary‟s Orthopaedic and nobody might be interested and

there might be about 20 people tweeting about the Tank Field in Montenotte.”

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking likes to tailor her social media training by tweeting

out questions, looking for feedback from her customers and potential customers.

Amanda says that she “actively encourages people to post on her wall or tweet her” to

get feedback for her training. She believes that if someone tweets or sends her a



43

question on Facebook, this means that people are also Googling the question, which

means that a blog post about it will direct traffic to her site.

These findings directly relate back to the literature review which states that two-way

symmetrical communication involves managing conflict with the aim of improving

understanding with strategic publics (Grunig et al., 2007).

4.6 Two-Way Communication: Changing a Product/Service

When participants were asked if they had ever changed a product/service because of an

interaction on social media, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

This relates back to Grunig‟s two-way symmetrical model where organisations adapt

accordingly to requests from their publics. Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy, of the Cork Independent, says that a lot of the changes that were made to the company website were

as a direct result of interactions online.

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum says that she gets a good understanding of how to price

her courses from the feedback she receives from her followers on Twitter.

Matt Kane of Curious Wines took what he had learned from his customers on Twitter

and added a “log in” capability to his site where customers could keep track of all their

previous purchases and score the wines on the site. Matt believes that the feedback he

receives from social media really helps him to speed up the changes to the company.

Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing feels that social media interaction is vital

when launching a product as “you need to know if the demand is there”.

The research findings confirm the literature review which states that two-way

symmetrical communication involves “adjusting the relationship between the

organisation and its publics” (Dozier, Grunig, and Grunig (1995: 41); Grunig and

Grunig (1992: 289).

4.7 Two-Way Communication: Building Relationships

The overall view, among participants, of building relationships with publics by using

social media sites was that Twitter was the best website for this, with Facebook coming

in at a close second. Surprisingly, LinkedIn wasn‟t mentioned very often as being good

for this.



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Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing says that she does build relationships from

using Twitter and she goes on to add that because of the amount of people who are now

on social media sites, some companies might not even need to have a regular Web 1.0

site. This is because one can “connect very easily with customers through social media”.

Matt Kane of Curious Wines says that the company built up a few relationships with

restaurants that are not as active as themselves through the use of social media.

Although he feels that word of mouth is far superior, he believes that social media

amplifies it. Matt thinks that a strong online presence is the perfect way to break the ice

when networking with new companies – “If we ever decided to drop into a [sic]

company, it would not be just a cold call to them.”

Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy of the Cork Independent built very helpful relationships out of her use of Twitter, as the newspaper hired two journalists that she meet on the social

network. Deirdre said that she is sure she would have met these people at events around

the city in time, but her use of Twitter sped up the networking process.

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum found Twitter very beneficial to find other

businesswomen in the area to interact with. She set up Cork Women in Business over a

year ago and she feels that she couldn‟t have done it without using Twitter. The

networking group also utilises other forms of social media to build relationships as they

have a private Facebook group where they can interact with each other. Margaret feels

that this is great and she said, “It‟s like having a board meeting every day.”

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking says that she builds relationships on Twitter and that

her “biggest client to date” approached her on Twitter.

The research stating that all interviewees have established and maintained relationships

through Twitter confirms what was discovered in the literature review, which states thatin two-way symmetrical communication, the focus is not on communication, but rather

on the aim of nurturing and maintaining relationships with publics (Botan and Hazelton,

2006).

4.8 Two-Way Communication: Respect Gained

This question had a resoundingly positive response from all participants.

Matt Kane of Curious Wines can tell that his business has gained respect as he can

regularly see his business being recommended by other people and businesses on



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Twitter. Matt feels that this is invaluable as it lets you “know that you ar e doing things

right”.

Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy of the Cork Independent believes that the newspaper is well

respected thanks to their use of social media. Deirdre attributes the newspaper‟s use of

Twitter as to the reason why the newspaper is well known outside of Cork.

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum finds that some people assume that her business is

much larger because of her strong online presence – “Some people come to me for

advice and they have been in business a lot longer.”

Ciara Crossan of WeddingDates.ie has built up respect for her business by being a

prolific social media user – this has led her to winning an Online Public Relations award

this year. This social media expert status that she now possesses has helped her build up

a very reputable name for her business. She now gets a lot of business inquires through

Twitter as people can instantly see that she is a specialist in her area.

All participants recognised that social media and in particularly Twitter can gain respect

for your business which is congruent with Grunig and Hunt‟s (1984) view that two-way

symmetrical communication can promote respect between the organisation and its

public(s).

4.9 Suggestions on how to effectively use Twitter

When participants were asked the question of what was the best way to use Twitter as a

communication tool, each respondent described using it as a two-way symmetrical

model of communication.

They explained that the social network should be used as the following:

A listening tool.

A way to negotiate with the audience.

As a means to resolve conflict.

As a way to build respect for their brand.

As a way to engage with the audience.

As a way to collect feedback from customers and possibly adapt their

products/services.



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When asked to describe how not to act on social media, each respondent replied giving

examples that fall under the umbrella of the following communication models: the Press

Agentry, Public Information and Two-Way Asymmetrical models.

They explained that the site should not be used to:

Post persuasive and manipulative messages that exaggerate the truth, i.e. the

Press Agentry model.

Bombard the audience with a constant flow of messages, i.e. the Public

Information model

Post the same messages and never adapt to the feedback from the public, i.e. the

Two-Way Asymmetrical model.

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking believes it is vital that you don't push the hard sell and

most importantly, that you must interact with others on the site.

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum describes the worst method of communication on

Twitter as “someone that spams and never interacts” with the other users.

Interestingly, Margaret feels that “the worst cardinal sin of all would be if you have

links from your Facebook on to your Twitter” as they are different sites, and they

should be treated as such. Margaret points out that Twitter isn‟t a marketing tool and

that the hard sell doesn‟t work . She feels that the bigger companies like Eircom and

Vodafone are realising this and they are not offering a customer service from their

social media accounts.

Deirdre O‟Shaughnessy of the Cork Independent agrees that the tone is vital and that

“overselling” is unacceptable and states that “you can only do a certain amount” of

advertising sales. Deirdre points out that “it‟s like the difference between PR and

advertising and people don‟t understand the difference. PR is „softly, softly‟ while

advertising is not. Social media is softer again than PR.”

Deirdre feels that it‟s vital to respect that if someone is connected to you on social

media, then you are “in their head all day long”, and therefore it is for this reason that

you cannot bombard them with advertising and not engage with them. Deirdre thinks

that you have to express an opinion to get people to engage with you.



47

Ciara Crossan of WeddingDates.ie thinks that businesses that just use Twitter to push

special offers will never get any sort of engagement on it as they don‟t under stand that

the channel is a two-way give and take medium.

4.10 Ranking Social Networks

To fully understand how beneficial particular social networks are in the practise of the

two-way symmetrical model of communication, participants were asked to choose only

one social network for their business. Three out of six respondents said they would use

Twitter as the only social network to promote their business. All six of the respondents

mentioned that Twitter was a very important social network for engaging with their

audience. The three that didn‟t pick Twitter as their number one choice said that they

would use it along with Facebook to maximise the reach of their message as Facebook has 2,014,100 users in Ireland (Edleman, 2011) compared to Twitter‟s total of 217,845

(knexsy, 2011).

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum picked Twitter as her number one social network for

SMEs because it is a great listening tool as it “keeps your finger on the pulse of

everything that's going on”. Margaret mentioned that Twitter is the best site to “plug

into what's going on in your market and industry”. She feels that the site offers great

networking and selling opportunities.

Amanda Webb of Spiderworking chose Twitter as her favourite social network, but she

pointed out that it is very challenging to find your customer base on the site and that this

takes a lot of research. She also mentioned that Twitter is a great site to add a social

aspect to a traditional website.

One participant stressed the benefits that the direct messaging has for the public image

of the company, as you can quash a potential crisis situation with a customer by dealingwith their issues through direct private mail on Twitter.

Another participant stressed that Twitter is a great way to generate customers for your

company as you can identify who is interested in what your company has to offer by

seeing who is following you. This participant also mentioned that Twitter is a great

starting point to take a relationship further in the way of adding someone on LinkedIn or

to a mailing list or even for a sales call.



48

The disadvantage of Twitter generally was that it is still primarily used by online

businesses, media professionals and technophiles, and if you want to reach the masses,

then Facebook is the social network to be used as there are both young and old

demographics on the site.



49

Chapter Five: Conclusions and Recommendations

This chapter follows on from the logical reasoning in the analysis chapter. Clear

conclusions will be made in relation to the communication model that is used on Twitter

from a PR perspective. The conclusions and recommendations will be drawn from theprimary and secondary data that was compared and contrasted in the previous chapter.

Recommendations will be given for future research, as well as for SMEs/entrepreneurs

engaging in Twitter as part of their PR activity for their company; this will be based on

the knowledge that was developed during the research process.

5.1 Conclusions

The purpose of this dissertation was to assess the communication model used on Twitter

by Irish SMEs/entrepreneurs from a public relations perspective. The ultimate

conclusion of this research is that Twitter is a good way of practising the two-way

symmetrical model of communication as there are opportunities to listen, to engage and

to promote mutual understandings between the organisation and the company. Social

media is adding a lot to the PR functions of SMEs/entrepreneurs. The research also

concluded that Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites for practising the

two-way symmetrical model of communication.

SMEs / entrepreneurs that are clued in to this new phenomenon of social media are

reaping the benefits of it. The benefits are there even more so for the

SMEs/entrepreneurs if they practise the right model of communication when using the

social network.

SMEs / entrepreneurs are becoming more aware of how to practice social media to the

highest standards to promote their business online, and they are generating good word

of mouth and word of mouse for their business. While some SMEs/entrepreneurs are

utilising social media to good effect, others have failed to yield such results because of

their misunderstanding of the communication model that should be practised on the site.

In the current economic climate, SMEs / entrepreneurs are very careful in what marketing

and PR initiatives they invest in for their businesses as they cannot afford to devote a lot

of money into programs that yield little results for their business. It is for this reason

that companies are coming on to Twitter in their masses.



50

However, Twitter is still very much in its infancy with regards to its number of users in

Ireland – it is becoming an effective free tool for SMEs/entrepreneurs to spread the

word about their business.

SMEs/entrepreneurs are now recognising the benefits that social media actively

provides for their business and while some are becoming thought leaders in their

industry, others are failing to utilise the site‟s full potential as they are merely using it as

a marketing tool.

This study demonstrates that Twitter can have a positive effect on the public relations of

SMEs/entrepreneurs when it is applied successfully. Findings conclude that Twitter

facilitates two-way symmetrical communication and also show that social media is an

effective PR tool for businesses as it allows organisations to practice the true definitionof public relations.

Findings also show that Twitter is an effective way to practise the two-way symmetrical

model of communication as it involves using communication to manage conflict and

improving understanding with strategic publics (Grunig et al., 2007).

5.2 Research Question 1

From the research carried out, the following are the reasons why social media is an

effective public relations tool:

It is a cheap way to communicate with your publics.

It is a way of competing with bigger companies as smaller companies find it

easier to engage in social media as they are more adaptable.

It offers a new channel to pitch stories to news outlets.

It is a great way to build a loyal following for your business that will endorse

your message.

Overall, each participant felt that, especially in today‟s economic climate, social media

is an essential part of a company‟s communication channel. The participants

acknowledged the fact that a lot of companies might fear opening themselves up to the

public by having an online presence but the resounding answer to this was that the

positives outweigh the negatives, and that if a company is upfront and honest with their

messages, social media engagement will greatly improve the public perception of theirbusiness. Participants felt that many bigger companies are not using Twitter effectively



51

as they do not understand the communication tone that is needed to be successful on the

site. Participants felt that people are still reluctant to engage with large organisations as

they do not feel that their comments are taken on board because often it is someone who

is very low down the employment structure of the company that maintains the social

media account.


From the research carried out, the following are the benefits of using Twitter as a

communication channel:

It allows the SME to monitor their brand‟s image online.

It can be used as an information-sharing network.

It helps you to communicate with the local community.

It can be used as a news distribution channel.

It enables media relations and it is a good way to interact with journalists.

It is a great way to increase visitors to your company‟s website.

Social networking sites can be used to build professional credibility.

It provides access to fast and cheap communication with others.

It can be used as a business networking tool.

It can be used as a soft-sell sales tool.

On anaylsis of the findings from the secondary data, it was concluded that there has

unquestionably been an increase in the amount of journalists who are on Twitter.

Statistics prove that nowadays more and more people in the media industry in Ireland

are joining the site. This means that the site has turned into an alternative to the

traditional e-mail or telephone pitches, and nowadays journalists take story pitches

through their Twitter accounts.

However, many disadvantages were also noted; in particular overuse of the social

network could hinder the company‟s reputation. Spamming people‟s news feeds with

sales messages will cause a company to be very unpopular on the site. Using the site as

a one-way communications channel will be a waste of time as credibility will not be

gained online in this way. One participant noted that an endorsement on a Twitter news

site in the form of a re-tweet was almost as good as appearing in the printed version of

the newspaper as news sites now have a very large, loyal Twitter following and a re-

tweet is seen as the online equivalent of a third party endorsement.



52


From the research carried out, the following are the reasons why Twitter is a good

way of practising the public relations two-way symmetrical model of communication:

It facilitates two-way engagement with existing and new audiences.

It is an effective way to build mutual respect between an organisation and its

publics.

It is a great tool through which to cultivate relationships.

It is an effective reputation management tool.

It can be used as a means of gathering research and feedback that potentially

leads to altering communication messages.

It allows organisations to keep up to date with news on other companies or

brands.

It allows the SME/entrepreneur to utilise it as a listening tool and to monitor

their company‟s image online.

Research findings indicate that many SMEs/entrepreneurs are utilising social media to

good effect through the usage of two-way symmetrical communication. Grunig and

Hunt‟s (1984) two-way symmetrical model represents a communication shift to

conversation-based interaction. This study has found that the evolution of

communication can strengthen customer service, increase brand recognition and

develop brand loyalty.

I can see from my research that Irish SMEs/entrepreneurs are using Twitter effectively

as a source of two-way symmetrical communication. Four out of six participants in my

research are using the site for feedback and are altering their products, services and

messages accordingly. One participant mentioned that it would be foolish not to listen

to your audience as people are now very vocal online about what they want from

companies. Another participant noted that the valuable feedback you get from

customers has meant that market research is becoming less important as you are

constantly kept up to date on the mood of your audience. All six of the interviewees said

that they built relationships from interacting on the site – these relationships led to

media coverage, new clients, new employees and new business partners. A number of

participants said that their use of Twitter has meant that others thought that they were



53

much larger and around for a lot longer than they actually were, because of the large

following they had acquired on Twitter.

It can be concluded that the relationship between SMEs/entrepreneurs and their publics

has changed. Social media has created an entirely different communication channel for

organisations in which a whole new set of rules apply.

Social media engagement can now build up a company‟s reputation and help them to

foster new relationships with their customers, the media and their peers.

Research findings show that social media is a new channel for PR activity to take place

through. The literature has concluded that PR and social media are directly related

because they are both in the business of “being social” (Odden, N/A) and that the

communications industry was one of the first to embrace the power of social media

(Scott, D.M., 2010). Online communication is becoming more and more important

because, with the new age of social media, dissatisfied customers have the capacity to

speak to ten million potential customers (Harvard Business Review Analytic Services,

2010). However, the research also suggested that having a social media presence is very

time consuming and that SMEs/entrepreneurs should only get involved with it if they

are willing to put in the effort as the end result is entirely up to them and results are not

instantaneous.

SMEs/entrepreneurs now have the chance to communicate better with their publics

through social media sites such as Twitter, where they can monitor and control their

online reputations and build new relationships. The research indicates that there are also

disadvantages that come with SMEs/entrepreneurs engaging in social media. These

include harming the company‟s image by automatically following and un-following

people just to get a large group of followers on the site. In addition, there is the potential

for bad publicity that can come about from posting insensitive, political or rude

messages on the site.

To ultimately conclude, the author feels that the use of Twitter by SMEs/entrepreneurs

will significantly increase over the next couple of years in Ireland. Interest levels in

Twitter as well as the site‟s potential have dramatically increased among the Irish

business community in the last year. Also, the inaugural Social Media of Ireland

Awards highlighted the best practise of how a company can utilise Twitter for theirbusiness. From this study, it is apparent that there is a lack of literature and little



54

information in public relations texts regarding the subject of Twitter as a two-way

symmetrical model of communication.

Thus, the findings from this research provide significant insights into the impact that

social media is having on the SMEs/entrepreneurs in Ireland from a public relations

perspective and thus thoroughly resolves the research question of this dissertation.

5.5 Final Words

The research study has led the author to conclude that from a public relations

perspective, social media is having a considerable effect on SMEs/entrepreneurs in

Ireland, and the author hopes that this study will contribute to future exploration of this

subject.



55

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Appendix 1 – Letter to Interviewees

Hi __________,

My name is Cian O‟Regan and I am a Master‟s student attached to the Department

of Media Communications in the Cork Institute of Technology. I am studying Public

Relations with New Media.

I am conducting a research study as part of the requirements of my Master‟s degree

in Public Relations with New Media, and I would like to formally ask you to

participate in a

research study on how Irish businesses are using Twitter.

This study will consist of a semi-structured interview at a mutually convenient

place, and should last about 45 minutes.

If you have any queries I would be pleased to answer them.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Kindest Regards,

Cian O'Regan



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Appendix 2 – Research Questions

What is your understanding of public relations?

What are your views on social media?

What are the advantages of using social media for Irish SME‟s /entrepreneurs?

Which social media sites would you use the most to interact with customers/potential

customers?

Has social media helped you to understand your customers/potential customers?

Have you ever changed a product/service because of an interaction on Twitter?

Have you built business relationships solely from your use of Twitter?

Has your business gained respect because of your use of Twitter?

Why do you think your business has been so successful on Twitter?

What are the characteristics of a low-followed or an unpopular Twitter account by an

Irish SME/entrepreneur?



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Appendix 3 – Consent Forms



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Appendix 4 – Interview Transcripts

Margaret Smith of Umnumnum – Interview


Public relations for me is all about getting your name out there in the most positive light

possible so that you‟ll eventually get business as a result of it and also that there is a

positive vibe around your name so that people know you for the right reasons.

What would your views of social media be?

Social media is something that was a surprise to me. I started a course on social media

and up till then I totally dismissed it as something that wouldn‟t be for me. It‟s a

challenge that one should go on Twitter and see how it works. I took to it like a duck to

water and I never looked back since. So for me because I started from nowhere, I started

with no money, it‟s free, all it takes is time. I have a naturally funny personality and I‟m

fairly vivacious so it lends itself to work well for me.

Did you have a personal account first?

No I never had one. I started straight in with Umnumnum

What are the advantages of using social media for Irish SME’s?

The advantages for me were huge; I was a stay at home mum for 10 years so it was a

chance for me to dip my toes in the water. I was putting myself out there, taking a risk,

and I started very small. I was able to build my knowledge as I went along with the

amount of followers I had. Once I started doing it I started getting interested in it and I

started doing courses in it, picking people‟s brains on it. I started doing a digital

marketing diploma early on in the year and it gave me a broader view of marketing andhow they interact with each other.

Was this course before you first tweeted?

I read a book called What Would Google Do? and I was inspired as it was all about how

to engage an audience and it was all free. I learned that having a community around

your business is so beneficial as they do the advertising for you.

Was there a period of trial and error?



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Oh yeah I didn‟t have a clue at the start, I watched Twitter for two weeks without saying

a word and then one day someone talked to me and I wasn‟t even sure how to write

back. What I find is that the more vulnerable you are on Twitter the better because if

you say “I haven‟t a clue what I am doing” people will naturally help you. The first

person that ever talked to me I‟m actually ver y good friends with now and worked

together with them for a while. I made a load of connections and a load of new friends. I

have opportunities from it which I would never have got from sitting at home on my

own. I have a lot of connections too with traditional media which – people don‟t

understand that there is a very strong link between the two. It is an easy way to get into

traditional media by using social media.

Is that how you got the job with the Cork Independent?

We had a Twitter meet-up where I supplied cakes and the editor of the Cork

Independent said, “They are fantastic, where can I buy them?” So I dropped them up a

box and they mentioned me on their Facebook page and they asked me what I was

doing and it all steamed from there. Twitter breaks you into a relationship; it brings you

from being cold to immediately thinking you know somebody. It‟s a great opening for a

new business rather than cold calling. You have some sort of basis where you have this

relationship from.

Would Twitter be the best site to interact with your customers?

For me it would be. I like the instant aspects of it and it‟s not like Facebook where you

have to constantly check who is interacting with you. I use TweetDeck to filter to it but

I also like the randomness of Twitter. I think there are ground rules on Twitter, a sort of

an ethic where someone talks to you, you answer them back – just like if someone

walks into a room and talks to you, you would answer them back. I‟m religious about

answering back as I hate it if people don‟t answer me. I think social media is all about

manners, like “please” and “thank you” are so important. I set up my notifications to

notify me when people re-tweet my stuff so that I can thank them. I re-tweet people

back to thank them for being nice to me, it‟s swings and roundabouts – social media is

real life but it‟s just online. It‟s like if you were in a company you would act well – it‟s

the same thing but just online it‟s not rocket science and if I can do it anyone can. I have

a 16-year-old who is my IT department but I have really taken to it. My approach to it is

I‟m trying my best to sell things whether it is business to business or business to

consumer. I‟m selling a night out so you have to know I‟m easygoing and fun. I have



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this thing as well where I follow you back as long as you are chatting but I don‟t like it

when people just keep going on, like this thing again, would you go into a room and

keep start shouting at people. If someone is interactive that‟s brilliant. I don‟t just

follow businesses, I would follow anyone anywhere bar Mars. I would follow anyone

back once they are interacting.

At first what were the type of people you started to follow?

I got great advice to follow friends so that I would have someone to talk to and have fun

– that was the first order of the day. At the start I found one or two people I knew were

on it and I looked at their lists and picked a few others I vaguely knew so that I could

have a conversation. The first month I suppose I did follow 200 or 300 people and about

a third followed me back because I wasn‟t talking back to them. Since then I haven‟tgone out that much to follow people – they have actually come to me. If I talk, the more

people talk to me and then the more people look at me. It has been organic and I think

that is the way to build your community. All those guys out there with ten thousand

followers and about 15 tweets – they are not engaging. I have 1,400 followers and I

have 600 unique people then @ mentioned me, so I‟m interacting with at least 600 of

those. That is very important to me that the more people I have, the more people know

what I do. I‟m just lucky I don‟t really ask for them – they just seem to follow me. If

you‟re around long enough, you end up building trust and people know you are not out

on the take. The hard sell does not work on Twitter. If I have to advertise my stuff, I just

advertise it one day a week and about 2 or 3 times that day and that‟s it. My Facebook is

linked to my Twitter and anything I put on Facebook I put it on a few times to catch the

different people.

Has Twitter helped you understand your customers better?

I try to open up a conversation rather than tell people what I have, there is no point

having something if people don‟t want it. I try to get people‟s feedback as much as

possible. I can‟t keep everyone happy all the time so I have to pick one or another thing

and I do take people‟s opinions. I have also used Twitter for advice from the different

foodies and if I have questions it‟s great, they are there at the click of a finger. They can

give me advice and if I don‟t understand, they can explain what their experiences were

and that helps. I can gauge by people‟s reactions about things and then decide whether it

is a complete “no-no” or if this could be good.



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Have you ever changed a product/service because of the interaction of Twitter?

Yes, definitely, on things like pricing, duration of courses and I use it for market

research too. I know also by gauging from reaction if I pitched it wrong, then I‟d re-jig

it and save face and try to re-launch.

Have you built business relationships through Twitter?

Yes a lot, I have met people that I can collaborate with and you know I started Cork

Women In Business. When I started again after the course, I was a mother coming into

the market and starting up was hard. I knew a lot of men in business but not a lot of

women and not a lot of mothers. I was told to get a network so I took that and ran with

it. Cork Women In Business in over a year old now. It‟s not a networking group, it‟s a

support group. We come together every month and we have a sort of learning situation.

We have people who come in and give talks. Damian Mulley did a talk. The enterprise

board and others, they have all come in. But most of all we are there for the cup of tea

and the chat and the moan and the groan about what works for each other. We do a

show together and we share. For me, at the start, I thought they were scary from coming

into it being a housewife. I felt that going into a room and with the people being

predominantly male, it was scary. But when you are in the networking group you say,

“Oh this is me it is fantastic and I‟m selling millions.” I‟m very honest and I have

attracted a group of women who are very similar to me and we enjoy the same thing.

Some people have come and it‟s not their thing and that‟s fine but we have a core group

of fantastic people. I know they are at the other end of the phone if needed. We use

Facebook as our meeting where we have a private group where no one can see. We can

have a full private conversation on it and we don‟t actually have to meet. We debate

everything before it happens; it‟s like having a board meeting every day. I find

Facebook brilliant for that.

Did you use social media to form the group?

Yes I did, the first thing was Twitter and the meeting was in my house in my front

room. There were about ten of us and now there are fifty of us. That is the core group of

us and there are people who come in and out; there are no rules as such. It‟s very

informal – you don‟t have to have a business as such to come if you want to come for a

chat. We did have to put a price on it and we have to pay for the venue and stuff butthat‟s it really.



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Why do you think your business is so successful on Twitter?

It goes in tandem with a discovery of my own sort of personality. For years I was trying

to mask this sort of honesty, dampen it down and pretend to be like everyone else. I felt

I had nothing to lose on Twitter, you know, I could just have discovered a week later. I

felt people responded to honesty and authenticity very well. I feel if you are honest

people can see it. I feel with Twitter you can see very easily if people are being false. I

feel you do have opinions on their tweets and people look on me very fondly on Twitter.

They know I won‟t praise anything unless it is very good – if it is marvellous I will say

it is, but I would not otherwise. I would say in a gentle nice way to them not to do that

as it is not working for you. Most people would say “thank you very much” as they

didn‟t realise that. Last week there was a young fellow and he started a new business

and he asked me for advice – well he asked generally for advice. Then I started

following him and in the end I got an automated message back, then I got a RT and then

I rang him and spent a half an hour explaining the basis of how Twitter works. It‟s the

personal touch and he is starting a company that is building a community. I know the

automate at the end saves time but I hate it and know everyone does and it could cost

you in the end. My advice is not to spam and you have to bide your time until you can

spam a little. You have to build relationships before people will put up with you. It has

to be subtle, that is the key. I don‟t follow the marketing guru types. I have no interest in

them. I have lost a few followers but I suppose over the last year I have lost only about

twenty. It‟s funny that people that don‟t engage with me are still watching me. I was at

the stage at the start that I was checking in all the time but I have stopped that. Some

people were able to tell me where I eat and where I was and I thought that was funny.

Has your business gained respect just because of your use of Twitter?

Yeah, actually people think I am a lot more successful than I am. Some people come to

me for advice and they have been in business a lot longer. I think it‟s because I have a

bigger presence on Twitter. Some people use you for your influence. But I don‟t mind

being used every now and again. Some people would ask me for a favour to RT and

that‟s fine once they don‟t take advantage. I don‟t want them to be clogging it up with

stuff that isn‟t of any interest to me or to my followers. I love new things – as you

know, I entered the social media one day and ran with it. I love a challenge, I love

something new. I love the social side of social media. You see, working from home aswell, social media is my water cooler. If I sit down at home for ten minutes I could talk



81

to anyone like this morning about half past four and I went to check the weather and

there was someone else on, it was great, another insomniac. It‟s like having someone

there all the time. I generally have made brilliant friends from it, brilliant.

When you finish your blog would you get many comments?

I‟m finding that diff icult as they don‟t comment on Twitter. I don‟t like asking them to

comment on the blog as I think that is very false, not real at all and that is an issue. But

what I do then is that people that are interested in my business, I transfer over to

Facebook and they like me there. Then for people that are only interested in what I have

to say, I leave them on Twitter. I don‟t do the hard sell and say “please like me on

Facebook”. I think there is no point in having someone there that has no interest in what

you are selling anyway. Well I think quality is better than quantity, that the whole ideaof social media is you want people who want to read your stuff and not hide it like if

you were having this conversation in the days that people used to hide things.

What are the characteristics of a low followed or unpopular Twitter account by an

Irish SME in your opinion?

Someone that spams, they never interact or they never talk, I suppose what is even

worse is that they don‟t do even that. The worst cardinal sin of all, you have links from

your Facebook on to Twitter. Someone asks you a question on Twitter and they don‟t

check their account. That drives me insane – if I send it to the two, I‟m always watching

for about an hour and a half afterwards to see if they pick things up. Again it‟s like not

answering back, you are using that interaction – it‟s silly. People that re-tweet things –

if you re-tweet every time someone says something nice about you, that really annoys

me. The hard sell doesn‟t work and even the bigger companies I feel like Eircom and

Vodafone and all of them, they are working well.

If an SME was just starting out and only wanted to use one social media site for

their business, which one would you recommend to them?

For me it would be easy as I started on Twitter and still believe it is the best as it allows

networking and selling opportunities while also allowing you to plug into what's going

on in your market and industry. It also keeps your finger on the pulse of everything

that's going on.



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Deirdre O’Shaughnessy of Cork Independent – Interview

What is your understanding of Public Relations?

Public relations? Well, as a journalist I suppose we have two of public relations, we are

at both ends of it here. My job as editor means I‟m definitely at both ends, we come up

against a lot of public relations – people in our work and we get a lot of help from them.

We also have to do our own, in terms of an SME, and in my role there we don‟t have a

PR person so it‟s really my job to make sure the papers are giving out the right

messages. As a company, we are at the right events; we are mixing with the right

people, that we are bracketing a segment of the market. We are obviously a business to

business publication in terms of people of whom we deal with and it‟s that business that

pays our wages. But it‟s our readers, our consumers and the general public and they

have the widest readership of any because we are free. So we have to see if they are

sending the right messages to the businesses we deal with, the ad agencies, to local

businesses, to national and multinational businesses and to the general public. It can be

very hard to pitch between all of those. Within journalism I suppose there is a certain

amount of reparation building for indivisible journalists for a newspaper as a brand, and

also for a newspaper as opposed to news. We of course are very conscious of doing all

those things. In the course of working on those public relations with a very limited

budget, I found that Twitter and Facebook and other free media are the way to go for us.

Given that we are an advertising outlet it‟s funny that we don‟t do much advertising

ourselves. I suppose we advertise ourselves quite heavily in our own publication. We do

as much as we can PR-wise to get radio and television coverage, online coverage and

we have been very successful in that really since we have started looking at it in that

way.

What are your views on social media?

I think it‟s the ultimate tool really and it‟s sort of infinite. I think the possibilities are

infinite in social media but that means the possibilities for both positive and negative

things happening. We have overwhelmingly had a very positive experience from it.

Despite the fact that we are here as a very small team with no professionals among us,

we didn‟t pay anyone 500 euro to set up our Facebook page. We set it up ourselves; it

was worked on by the editorial team here and by the sales team and me. I think that‟s



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useful for us – we are writers, that is our job anyway. In terms of dealing with the

audience or pitching to an audience, we have dealings of that already. I think that maybe

that‟s where some companies fall down because they haven‟t got the experience of this

sort of setup. I think with social media the possibilities are immense for it and, as I have

said, we did have some negative feedback from it. We have one of the most active

Facebook pages in the country and that includes all the national newspapers. We have

had some negative feedback from that as well but I have felt that social media is quite

self-regulating. People say it‟s a hard mentality but actually it is in more ways than one.

You feel if you set the tone right, our Facebook page tone is very jolly and friendly. It is

not as serious as the newspaper as the Facebook page is a personality. If you set the tone

in that positive light, you will see that people will be very reluctant to be overly critical.

People are very welcome to come back with criticism or feedback or anything like that – and people do regularly. People would ask “why didn‟t you feature this or that” or

“why didn‟t you interview a particular person” and that‟s fine with us. They want to

know why there are so many ads on the paper and I think if you are honest and upfront

with people and you do your best to admit when you have made mistakes, you will find

people can be quite good about it. Also you will notice that the few people who are

moaning will be cut down by the peers instead of you having to do it. There is not really

the case that you have to censor the page now – there is a certain amount of people who

we had to block but in general we know they are fake profiles set up by someone else.

You can usually tell when someone is engaging or not. I think a lot of businesses are

afraid of social media for that reason. I feel if you can stand over your product and if

you are honest about your resources and about what you can and can‟t do, you are on to

a winner. If you are using social media for a benefit like media companies like us, it

can‟t be more useful. We have such a small news team in comparison to newspaper

teams say 30 years ago but we are able to do so much more. You get criticism from

older journalists who are so set in their ways. They criticise about journalists sitting on

their chairs getting news from Facebook but that is not how it works as Facebook is not

a story. It is the way you access the people or the story or whatever it is. The odd time

you will access the story on Twitter and you will see if anything will come out of that

but it‟s an amazing tool for communications. It is just another way of communication

but just with a wider audience. It is a totally different game than the way of the older

journalists but I can‟t imagine doing my job without the Internet. I know there are

journalists still working without the Internet; I am totally in awe of that because you

would not know where to start. It is becoming more and more the case where you see



84

some websites taking their contents straight off another website which we don‟t do. You

still have to have the principle of journalism – check your sources and make sure the

person you are talking to is a real person, whereas some journalists might not realise

that you can still do that. You can still follow the older principles and make sure that

what you are dealing with is real. There are different ways of doing it. There have been

studies done. There was a guy in America, a journalist who disappeared for six weeks

and got a new name and everything. He was tracked down on Facebook using Facebook

solely, so there are so many ways it can be done.

What are the advantages of using social media for Irish SME’s?

I think they are massive, one of the things I suppose in Ireland is that we are a very

small market. Naturally The Cork Independent is in Ireland and that is where we trade.There are so many of our advertising clients who have used social media already, there

are people who have built their profiles already through no advertising but totally

through word of mouth. That is what I like most about social media – it builds up trust,

it builds up a brand and it builds up a name. If people hear of a brand they would like to

try, they can look it up on Twitter to see if they can get it in their local shop. There are

so many brands particularly in Cork that have come alive through social media. In the

city here for example there are a trio of restaurants: The Liberty Grills, Café Gusto and

Electric which all have the very same people involved and they are linked. They all

work with social media and it has a massive effort – it really works for them. You can

put up a menu and say “oh, that looks nice”. But you have to keep engaging and I think

though people say “I heard of a company today who set up a social media profile for

their business and they have 3,000 fans on Facebook ”... but even the person that did the

social media left and he couldn‟t get a password. I think businesses need to be aware

that this is a whole other part of your business, like you wouldn‟t let someone go away

with all of your accounts – it‟s the same thing. If you can‟t manage your reputation

yourself then you should not have it at all in the first place. At the same time I don‟t

think you need to hire a new person for it; you need just to give someone responsibility

for it but make them aware it is a major responsibility and not something they can forget

about. But there are a lot of businesses using Twitter to effect, but my point about

Ireland being a very small market was that we are being told “export, export, and

export”. The way to get the name out there is online, it‟s like you can “smoke the duck”

all you like but how many people in Ireland are going to eat the smoked duck? But then

they have a huge market for it in Britain. But we have the language advantage in that



85

Facebook and Twitter is largely through English and we can get all English speaking

markets that way. I think if people use that well, it has endless possibilities.

Would Twitter be the site you use the most to interact with people of all the social

media sites?

No, in terms of the business, Facebook would be. For my personal account I‟d say

Twitter more so. I would regard the two of them quite differently. I would be a lot more

prolific on Twitter than on Facebook, purely because I have a problem; in terms of

journalists like myself, a journalist has to built a brand as well, separate from their

newspaper but also in tandem with it. Everyone in our newsroom now tweets but it took

a while for them to get into it and we can see the value of it now. I myself have an

iPhone so I am on Twitter all the time, it‟s the first thing I do in the morning and the lastthing I do at night. It had an immense effect for me, I got some radio work from it and I

also got some TV work from it. With me being in Cork I would not have gotten it

otherwise, Dublin is the focus for all these things seeing as it‟s the centre. But people

see you on Twitter and say “Oh, the Cork Independent, I didn‟t come across that.”

There are a lot of Dublin producers and researchers who think of Cork and say “Oh, The

Cork Independent.” You see, they see me and they see the paper tweeting.

You interact with a few people on Facebook. How exactly would that go about,

would it be personal in a way?

No, not really on the paper‟s Facebook page no it wouldn‟t. Every morning our

trademark would be, say, “Good Morning Cork ”, every single day during the working

week. We do not do it at weekends. If during the week , we don‟t put it up until, say, 12

o‟clock people would be asking are we dead and that‟s a really healthy thing. As we are

a weekly paper it‟s so important to have a presence all the time. I know a lot of the

people who use the Facebook site never read the paper at all; they are two separate

audiences. That‟s another thing we have to offer to our advertising clients; we can say

we have 10,000 fans on Facebook, we have 150,000 readers. Basically we have almost

three separate audiences, the Facebook and the website people are probably closely

linked. But the same people don‟t read the paper or use the Facebook or the Twitter, so

we can spread our news in so many different ways. We can also spread value to our

advertising clients that way as well; we are a free publication so that‟s the way it goes.

But Facebook would be the way we interact the most with, say, the ordinary people on

the street. I find Twitter is still mostly media people or people who are interested in



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media, say political nerds and that sort of thing. But there are a lot of people on

Facebook who Twitter would never occur to and it would be of no use to. Even people

who ever enter competitions or people who want to know what is happening to the

primary school down the road. There are the people who a local source on Facebook

everyday is very useful. They come to us and say, “My water isn‟t working” and we can

say, “The City Council told us this.” It could be up on the City Council website already

but they would ask us because we are an authority on it. I think that kind of thing is

fairly healthy for the brand.

If someone asked you a question on Twitter, would you answer everyone?

Yes we generally would.

Has Twitter helped you understand your customers?

Twitter, yeah, well I suppose because we are a free newspaper, our customers are our

advertising clients and our readers are into that process and they are our audience. We

would put up an Indo opinion which is our “vox pop” every week and we go out and

about and do a face-to-face and we do it on Facebook and Twitter and you would see

different answers coming in from different places. It does also show you, if you are

monitoring Twitter, the local issues that people are actually interested in. We can be

puffing away on a local issue like St. Mary‟s Orthopaedic and nobody might be

interested and there might be about 20 people twittering about the Tank Field in

Montenotte. We notice that some particular story might be of importance in relation to

the City Council but actually nobody on the street gives a toss about it. We don‟t have a

budget for market research and that is very valuable but one thing that will, Twitter has

the loudest voices which are the ones that will be heard. The people on Twitter are the

ones who will write letters to the editor anyway. But on Facebook it is much more an

ordinary person level. We see on Facebook, where one of the things that I found very

surprising was the VAT rate cut last week and we asked if they thought it would be

passed on and 7 out of 8 people said no and that they didn‟t expect it to be passed on.

They said they needed it to pay staff and they wanted to regenerate it and be able to

employ maybe another staff member. I think that would have been very important to the

government if they had known that. It also shows you that people are thinking

differently than what you had thought they were. It also shows that you can never

assume that you know the way people are thinking.



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Have you ever changed any part about the business because of an interacting of

something you have learned through social media?

Yeah we probably have, our website, we have just redesigned our website and a lot of

that would have been on account of social media, due to the fact that social media is

existing and the fact that we are so involved in it and also because of the feedback we

have gotten from people. Some of the things that are on the website would be as a direct

result of the feedback we have gotten from social media. Now you can click into the

sections a lot easier and it is a lot more searchable and our digital edition now is much

better. Some people had complained about that before and I suppose like every

business, our resources are limited and more limited than some. But on the other hand,

because we are so small, we are very much able to react to things. Because I am the

editor and I also look after social media and if people say to me, “Oh, you have a typo

in this article”, I can just go away and change it right there and then but I couldn‟t do

that in the old way. So I suppose that‟s there for two reasons: the immediacy of social

media but also the immediacy of a very small site. We are blessed in that regard really –

if you look at bigger newspapers, any of the national newspapers, they have so many

processes to go back through. If you look at any of the national newspapers they have so

many processes and people that they have to go through. There marketing department is

looking after their Twitter so that has to go back to the newsroom to the journalist, sub-

editor and the editor. But here, if someone says to me that this is wrong I say, “Sorry

about that” and I go away and I fix it. I think it adds to people‟s feelings that we are

very local, very contemporary and young and that we can just react to things and go

with the flow. We would quite regularly ask for feedback with the new website; we

have a poster up saying “If you are happy with us, e-mail us.” On the site, as well, if

you go into any news story the journalist‟s name is obviously up there but their Twitter

account is also up there. You can tweet at the journalist about what you think about their

story. I suppose we have modelled certain aspects of it on news journalism and things

which we are able to do within our resources, we have done. I suppose probably some

of the things we have done are not within our resources and we have spent time trying

to catch up, but that is what life is anyway so you just try to adapt. I suppose the one

about the journalist on Twitter; I said to the journalist, “If you have a peculiar story,

tweet it and see what the reaction is.” I notice that people don‟t usually come back about

things; people with a mistake usually come back. We had one story about – I don‟tknow if it was about a religious story or about Christmas or Easter – and the Church of



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Ireland came back and said, “You didn‟t do anything about the Church of Ireland.” So

then we decided the following week to do a feature on the Church of Ireland. Now, I

suppose he would have contacted us anyway in another form, but that would show you

the feedback is still there and we have it on to make a sort of short cut and people will

think of it before they have a serious issue or whatever.

Have you built relationships solely from your use of social media and in particular

Twitter?

Absolutely – we have two columnists who write in our well, inside our column on the

political form who I know solely through Twitter. I would generally make a policy of

meeting people from Twitter if we were going to use them in the paper or if they were

going to use us for something. We have a policy of meeting people to make sure youhave them in good faith, so that‟s one example; there are probably others. We would

also have a policy of, for any of our columnists who are on Twitter say like Sarah

Waldron who writes our fashion column, we would ask them always to tweet out their

column. We would tweet it as well just so that we would kind of spread to all the

different audiences as much as we can.

So, you used it in that regard as recruitment – was it something you went about or

just something that was built up over time?

Over time really, it‟s all networking and people who are going to be interested in

something like that – you will come across it some way. Twitter is just a more

immediate way of that happening. I have only been working in Cork for two years and I

have found Twitter and Facebook absolutely invaluable. I find it invaluable with regards

to networking, connections throughout the city and even geographically. I‟m sure I

would have come across these people anyway but I already knew them from Twitter so

that was lovely.

Do you think your business has gained respect because of social media and

Twitter?

Yeah, absolutely, I think as news source outside of Cork we are the most active online

of any of the media. I think Red FM would be as active as us but in a different way, not

so much news-wise. We would actually be very well respected outside of Cork because

people know us as the one that is constantly on Facebook. Within Cork as well, people

would have always known there was a free newspaper. It‟s funny really – a couple of



89

weeks ago, I mentioned that it was my second anniversary with the paper. Then people

were saying, “Is the paper there that long?” and when I told them it was there six years

they were amazed. I said, “You only know it as a result of Twitter.” They would have

known there was a paper but they would not have known the name of it or taken much

notice of it. I think one of the things that has happened people in the last five years is

people have started using free news online in a way that they would never have trusted

before. Now people have adjusted to reading news online and believing it, now they

will look at a free paper and realise there is no difference and that it is actually the same.

I think that free newspapers have probably grown up a bit in that process. If you look at

the Limerick Post, they have an app and now they are the only Limerick newspaper

with an app. We don‟t have an app yet but we are getting there and people now see

there is no distinguishing between a free paper and a bigger newspaper.

Why do you think your business has been so successful on social media?

I think it‟s all about the tone; it‟s very important that someone is managing social

media. Also, it‟s very important that they have the right tone to deal with people, that

they know what is appreciated and what is not appreciated. I mean, we might get narky

comments the odd time if I started posting ads on Facebook, but ads pay my wages and

it‟s the way I have of earning money so literally that is what I would say to someone in

person. I would say the same to someone on Facebook in a friendly way, like I‟d say,

“Oh we have to eat!” I have to advertise sometimes, but I will try to keep it to a

minimum. That is our policy – we try not to advertise too much, but when we have to,

we do it. Obviously at times the paper is full of ads and we have a ratio of ads in the

editorial but without that ratio the paper would not make money. People are now

starting to realise that especially in the difficult times we have, but it is about always

adopting a particular tone online where you would speak to someone in person. If you

are speaking to a person online about something, keep it about yourself and not about

your company. You see, where AP have forbidden their journalists from expressing

opinions online – well, that‟s ridiculous. I think because we are a local company,

everyone knows we have a stake maybe in some of the news stories, even personally as

individuals. I would comment myself on a story but the Cork Independent would not

comment on it. I think online it is very important to have that line where you say, “I

work for the paper but this is my personal opinion.” I think once you have the tone

right, everything else will fall into place. You have to deal with people in a respectful

and sort of friendly way. I have different rules for my account and for the paper‟s



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account. I suppose that‟s why I tweet more often than the paper. I remember, because I

used to tweet more often before, the wrong thing has gone out on the wrong account. I

remember one time I said I would love some cheese and that went on the Cork

Independent Twitter! So I mean that can happen, but the majority of people on Twitter

think that‟s just hilarious. Because we are a small company and we are local and people

know who are behind it, they would just say, “Ah Deirdre, cop on like” and that‟s fine.

If it was the Irish Times and I said I would like some cheese, well, that would be an

issue! We are lucky we got away with that; cheeky boy company, sort of thing that is

fine, you just have to keep the line there. A lot of companies would let a grad or an

intern do their social media but I keep control of that myself because I think it is such an

important message. I think every message is so important and one bitchy thing could

lose you 100 followers just like that. I have been away for a day and someone has putup ads and we have lost followers, and it‟s as easy as that, that‟s how you lose people.

Things like incessantly posting loses you people or not posting enough loses you

people. It‟s a very fine line really; it‟s something you learn as you go along. We have

constantly built up followers and I don‟t know at what stage I should say we have

enough. I mean it is still Cork, and how many people in Cork are on Facebook? That‟s

the big question. It‟s ultimately about the tone and how you deal with people and

measuring where to pitch it.

In your opinion, what would you think of the characteristics of a low-following

social media presence or Twitter account – what do you think they do wrong?

They get the tone wrong, they‟re overselling too much really like, “We have a sale on”,

you can do a certain amount of that. Like I say, we intersperse our stuff like that but it‟s

not meant to be an ad. It‟s like the sort of the difference between PR and advertising and

peo ple don‟t understand the difference. PR is “softly, softly” while advertising is not.

Social media is softer again than PR. You have to remember if you appear on

someone‟s Facebook wall and if you have someone who is on Facebook all day you are

in their head. You have to respect that you can‟t be in their face; if you are constantly

bombarding people with just special offers and you are not engaging with them. I think

engaging is massive as well, like you asked if we always answer questions if people

come to us on Twitter or Facebook, well we do our best. It is only an oversight if a

person does not get answered or if we are not sure if they are asking us. If we have no

way of answering a question, we would generally try to get an answer and come back to

it. We always would engage and keep things light. A lot of Facebook pages for



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newspapers sites, and breaking news have just set up Facebook pages in the last couple

of months and they seemed to have learned this as well – when you put up a story, you

just don‟t throw up a new story. You would put an introduction to it like, “What would

you think of this?” and it kind of breaks the rules of journalism in the way you have to

express an opinion on it and get people to express an opinion on it. But that is the rule

of social media in that you have to engage yourself to get other people to engage with

you.

If an SME was just starting out and only wanted to use one social media site for

their business, which one would you recommend to them?

For a start-up SME that is dealing with the public, like a retailer or a service provider, I

would certainly suggest Facebook. Facebook is the easiest way to reach the widestaudience online and it can be used in partnerships with other local businesses and with,

for example, local newspapers like ourselves if the business is dealing with a

geographical market. Almost all the businesses that advertise in our newspaper now

include the Facebook logo on their advertisement and it fills the role of an expensive

website for many of them. Twitter in Ireland is still a niche site that is mainly used by

online businesses, media professionals and technophiles whereas Facebook is

increasingly used by older people (who have the money to spend), teenagers (who have

the power of persuasion over those who have the money), and a much wider

demographic overall.



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Matt Kane of Curious Wines – Interview

In your own opinion, what is your understanding of public relations for a

business?

Well, it would be your whole face, people‟s perception of you, your customer‟sperception of you or your potential customer‟s perceptions of you. It is trying to

communicate your message to the public.

What are your views on social media in general?

I think it is a great thing. We have been in business since 2008 and from the start, it has

been an inexpensive and cheap way to get out there. It is a fairly new phenomenon; it is

something that every small business should be doing and every large business as well.

The Internet is so democratic and all of a sudden you can do what the big boys are

doing. Actually you can do it better because you are more nimble, more flexible and

you can adapt a bit quicker to that sort of thing. Like sometimes, like your man in the

Honda ad says in the very slow voice, “It‟s not like I don‟t think that leadership is a

good thing but you get the best out of people when there isn‟t a manager looking over

our shoulder.”

What would you think are the advantages for Irish SME’s of using social media?

Well, Ireland is constantly trying to increase its export and that‟s a very good advantage

as it gives you nearly worldwide spread and worldwide visibility. There is great

potential for Irish companies to do that. But also for us, we don‟t have a great interest in

exporting as we are importers but we can touch base with everyone who is local to us,

even Dublin, Galway and all over Ireland. It is not just a case now of opening up one

retail outlet and concentrating on a 20-mile radius, but now you can reach the far side of

the country. What it does is it gets you into a big plan base really, so you are not just

looking at the local area.

Which social media sites would you use the most to interact with your customers?

Twitter and Facebook.

Could you describe the interactions on each one?

Well, with Twitter we just try to be ourselves, I think the thing is there is a lot of

mystery around how to use social media on the platforms of Twitter and Facebook and I



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don‟t think it needs to be like that. We just don‟t complicate it; we would be just

ourselves and become friends with people on it as opposed to becoming people who are

just trying to sell you something on it. The way we approach it is to be friends and if

people don‟t like us, then that is fair enough too. On Twitter we have a very soft

approach to people and they are very happy to follow us on it. They read our tweets,

have a bit of fun, crack a few jokes – they don‟t have to be wine readers as such, but

they follow us anyway. In that way, when people start following you and they read your

tweets, they know you are there and they start interacting with you. Then we are part of

the scene, we are contactable and then they know that we could do them a good deal on

wine if they need it. I feel just being there and being cool about it and they know we are

contactable if they need us and that is how we open the way of communication and they

know we are accessible. Facebook is the same although it is different in the sense that itis slightly more difficult to get followers. That is something we tried to toy with, how to

try to get more followers. We tried competitions and a few other things like Facebook

ads but I‟m not a great lover of the ads to be honest. With Facebook, we do five blog

posts a week, well sometimes four, but I try to do five, and I‟m posting then every day

on the Facebook page. The other day, there was something just posted on it about a

naked wine maker and I put it up for a bit of fun and it got about 9 comments on it even

though I thought it was a bit obscene, it was just for a laugh. We are going to be

updating our Facebook page very soon so watch that space. Twitter then is just about

random comments and out of them, I might put in tweets that would link to our website.

Then that would get conversation going, and in the wine business, we have got certain

brands and certain wines that we try to build up and through Twitter and Facebook, we

can get certain followers for that.

What would you think is a more personal relationship – Twitter or Facebook?

Probably Twitter I would say, but then Facebook has possibly more potential. If

someone posts a comment on our page, it opens up a conversation about things. There is

no hard sell about it – we love talking about wine and the page opens up a lot for us.

Has social media helped you understand your customers and your potential

customers?

Yes it has, it is very important to listen and in terms of our product and the business we

are in, our sales and getting first-hand feedback from people in the shop on certain

wines really determines what you sell. So you know that the demands of certain wines



94

are what you increase on and the sales of certain wines are better. Twitter and Facebook

are very good ways of selling as you would have people asking about some particular

wine and then you notice that people will start asking for the same wine in the shop and

it‟s then you realise that it‟s time we started bringing some of that wine in. You would

get a general feel about wine from Twitter and Facebook just like you would if people

were talking to you about it in the shop. It‟s also been great from the point of view that

you could see if they have an interest in a certain product; I think this is one of the great

advantages of Twitter. You learn a lot about customers from the Twitter and it is

invaluable, though you would learn more face-to-face with the customer, even though

with Twitter you have it in print. We did a national wine drinkers survey last year and

there was another smaller survey done recently so we are actually using our Facebook,

Twitter and blog followers that way for market research.

Have you ever changed a product or a service from an interaction you had with

your customers through social media, from their feedback?

You would get certain feedback on things or you realise something is not selling and

then you would check it out. In terms of the website, we have changed one or two things

and it‟s probably from the feedback that we got from Twitter and Facebook. It really

does make us speed up things a bit from the feedback we get. Especially at the start,

someone might have suggested that we put in a “My wine” section on the website which

is a personalised account you can have on curious wines. It recalls all your previous

purchases and you can also score the wines and take some points on the wines. We got a

lot of feedback from Twitter and Facebook on that. We do need to work on the site it is

getting a facelift at the moment and we are going through phase three on it. You will see

a lot of changes on it and it is going to be a lot more user-friendly, that is going to be a

great help and we will see what our followers think of it.

When you are making those changes, will you announce them to get feedback

along the way?

Oh, we will – that is very important to us, we have a news sheet as well and we get a lot

of awareness through that. If we hear people talking about a product, we will order it in

– it is a combination of e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, blogs and all that which comes

together and it makes your decision. They are always fairly good ideas.

Have you built business relationships through your use of social media?



95

Yes, we have with some restaurants though we find that some restaurants aren‟t up to

the kind of activity on the social media scene that we are as yet. It still helps a lot, like a

client we have and I try to post a recipe every week and I like to get a recipe off the

restaurants and it‟s great. I feel that it‟s a little favour for them and it‟s a little contact

for us. People seem to like recipes and it‟s what they like to read. You might not get a

lot of comments on it but you would get a few tweets on it like, last week it was re-

tweeted to so many followers, so we get that kind of thing. The one I put up last week

was just my own but I really feel word of mouth is the best sort, but I feel that the social

media sort of thing does amplify that. I would interact with restaurants through their

Twitter accounts with just like friendly comments. Even restaurants that we don‟t

supply to at least they know we are there if they are ever stuck. We get to know them a

little bit so if we ever decided to drop into them if would not be just a cold call to them.I feel that if some day I ever wanted to phone them up and I said, “This is Matt from

Curious Wines”, they would know who we are. There are some people who have been

marvellous to us like Damien Mulley – he does the social media classes and he gets

business owners to go to it and there could be 30 or 40 people there. The last one I was

at, I think there were about 50 people there and Damien used Curious Wines as one of

the examples which was great. He does that sort of thing quite a lot and it is great. From

that point, it is great and also with journalists. Journalists have learned what we were

doing through our Twitter and Facebook pages so that is certainly a great help and an

article was written a few weeks ago about what we were doing. Then Ann Donnelly is

the SEO expert in Clonakilty and I‟m friends with her and we are always chatting with

her and she tweets and she recommends us to everyone.

Would you have a loyal base of people who would re-tweet your stuff?

Yeah, it‟s good to have core followers and then you have people that are chipping in.

Do you think that your business has gained respect because of its use of social

media?

Yes, absolutely, the other great thing is I think it‟s great for Irish business – if

something goes wrong, you can just dive in there and sort something out straight away.

I keep an eye on things that way and it‟s lovely to hear of people recommending us. It

gives you a better idea and you know that you are doing things right.



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Could you compare your profile now and your profile if you didn’t use social

media?

I think it would feel like I wasn‟t doing enough to be getting out there. It would also be

very expensive to try to get out there, with the likes of newspaper ads, radio, and it

would be very bad on money as well. Without social media, you would not get people

to use your website – it just doesn‟t happen that way. I would think that our sales would

be down a lot if we did not use it and then we would be struggling. We do outsource it

but from what I understand, it does not take too much money to do so – we have a

budget for it. She also builds the website to be very user-friendly as well so that also

helps. I‟m not sure how many of our sales are online, but I‟d say about 30 percent or so,

but like every other kind of advertising, it is hard to say how much is from social media.

The thing about this one is it is free and it is growing – Facebook has over 1 million

users now; we can‟t ignore that. I think that advertising on newspapers and radio etc. is

very expensive. Maybe at Christmas time, we do a little bit, but I think it‟s money down

the drain. You have got to be very careful with your money as every penny saved is a

penny made. Our blog is separate from the website but it has been set up like that so

people that click on to one will go to the other. The blog is very important as it is

getting more people into it and it is speaking about wine terms and getting more people

interested in it that way. It gives you a great safety to have the blog and it gives you the

opportunity to get discussions going about the wines. Then maybe once a month we

would change the offers over and it will get the sales going. Then all of a sudden it turns

into a great sales channel as opposed to something people go to read. When we first had

the website, we were advised to set up the blog and that is how we got into good habits

from the start. It‟s all about routine now but we are at stage three now and we always

have to stay ahead as when we updated our website, it was the best wine website in

Ireland. So we have to keep it up, we can‟t sit still, we have to constantly improve it so

that‟s what we are going to do from now to Christmas, saying “What‟s the next step?”

all the time. On Twitter at the start, for the first month or two, our tone was not right, it

is very important to have your tone right. We were doing it all wrong at the start and

then we got some help on it and now it‟s great. We went along to one of the social

media classes as well and those types of things help you so much to understand things

better. We learned that people do not want to follow you if you are always on about

hard sell all the time or if your tweets are all about offers etc., it really does become lesseffective in the end. If you be yourself, people are more inclined to listen to you and



97

then it is more effective. The tone is very important and people check it not because

they want to buy all the time but they are interested in learning more about wine also.

It‟s like we are giving them free advice in a way. Our consultant got us on to Twitter,

Facebook, boards.ie and the blog was the most important part of her role at the start. We

won the Blog Award recently and the Silver Medal Media Award last year and then we

got Best Commercial Website and the most recent one is the Bord Gáis social media

award. I do five blogs a week and that is very important to me so I try to put an hour a

day into doing it. We don‟t have a rigid schedule for tweets though we probably should

so that is something I should improve on. Michael and I both do the tweets and we just

have to keep an eye on it to make sure we are not repeating things. When there are only

two people working away at it, that‟s fine.

In your opinion, what would a company be doing wrong to get a low following in

social media?

I suppose with blogs that are only updated every six months, it isn‟t worth their while.

Their blogs should be very frequent and of course the tone is another thing that I can‟t

stress enough. The thing is not to come across as just being a sales person, and the tone

is the thing that we got wrong for the first couple of months at the start. The tone should

be playful, friendly and very soft sell. If the blog is good, they will follow you anyway

even if they are not going to buy your wines. It‟s all about word of mouth at the end of

the day and people who don‟t like wine might tell their friends about the blog. By using

their blog as just a sales pitch and also by posting stuff that is not relevant or interesting.

It would be wrong if we just spoke to the wine people by making it just for the elite. It‟s

not the ones who have done their diplomas in wines that we are talking to as they are

not our customers as such. Our customers are people who have a little disposable

income and who just like a little drop of wine. I would think that about 1 in every 15 or

20 of my tweets are promotional. Whenever we change over our stuff, like at the end of

the month, then we will tweet a few of our special offers. We don‟t take advantage of

the people by not doing it too often.

If someone told you that they wanted to use one social network to interact with and

learn about their customers and gain respect, which would you pick?

The whole of the social media – Twitter, Facebook and blogs are very important to our

business especially in relation to sales, relationships and marketing. We also have a

newsletter and a mail-out customer database which is also very important to us. With



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regards to the whole of the social media, I think that the newsletter is most beneficial to

us. Twitter and Facebook are also very important. I think that in time Facebook will

take over from Twitter; it has a lot more followers and more potential and that is why in

phase three we will have a better landing page and that sort of thing and we will get

people who can sign up to the newspaper straight away. It really has great potential and

I‟m looking forward to that.



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Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing – Interview


I suppose gaining marketing and sales connections with a potential audience and

customers, that could be online or offline. There is a difference between online andoffline. I‟d say that offline is more sales based while online is a little bit more market

focused.

What would be your view on social media?

I work in online marketing so I would be a bit of a fool not to be involved in social

media. At the same time, I see a lot of benefits from it. I see a lot of companies gaining

business and gaining connections from it.

What would be the advantages of using social media for Irish SME’s?

I would say there are quite a number of benefits in that really; it opens up a lot of doors

for us and it is very easily accessible. It is a very open channel in terms of “You can

drop in any time you need to” and you have got a ready, waiting audience there. I

suppose with regards to small businesses, to coping with big issues, it‟s breaking

barriers and putting them on an even playing field. There are huge amounts of benefits.

I really think the smaller ones can be just as successful as the bigger ones on social

media. When you take cost out of the equation, you really start to think that is your

biggest gain and when you think of the amount of people working on a product in a

corporate company... the other issue is cost and if you break that down, you can see that

one person can manage it quite easily. That is where you can see that small businesses

can manage at the same level.

Which social media sites would companies use the most to interact with theircustomers?

Well, Facebook I would say is probably the primary one and then if you are going into

the recruitment sector, that would be different, and then there‟s Twitter. I suppose if I

had to pick which site was the best with regards to interaction between the business and

customers, it would be a battle to decide between Twitter and Facebook, but I would say

Twitter. Sometimes I think Twitter could be a little bit easier as I think Twitter is more

personal while with Facebook, you are talking to the whole audience.



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Do you think social media can help companies to understand their customers

more?

I would say they could definitely listen a bit more to their customers because when you

are looking at other communications, the customers feel they haven‟t got the access to

come forward and say what they need. On the website where you can have comments

from customers who would not usually come forward and do it, you have this open

dialog; they are a little bit braver to give their feedback, a bit more comfortable to give

their views. They will say things like “I don‟t like this or that” and then there are those

that say “I really like a certain thing.” I think it is very good to have that connection. I

do think they have to do a little bit of market research to engage in this way. Before,

companies would have had to outsource their market research but now they can do it

directly and it is much easier for them to do it that way and gain such useful

information.

Do you think companies would ever change a product/service because of an

interaction on social media?

Yes, when you are appealing to an audience and you are selling a peculiar product or

service, you need to know if the demand is there. The way you can do that is through

feedback and social media is the way to do that. You can ask a certain question and get

opinions back on it and if you have enough people saying “I want this to be done this

way and not that way”, you would be foolish not to listen to them. I have heard of a lot

of companies who have changed things because of the feedback they have received

from customers. I work with a lot of companies at the moment and I know they are

definitely listening to their customers and taking on board the feedback. They would be

open to suggestions and obviously they have a lot of product research gone into it; they

would consider promoting more products or bring in a certain range if the feedback was

there for it. Some companies might not want to change their core products because they

have put a lot of time and energy and cost into them. If companies hear that their

customers are mainly interested in a certain product, then they would try to push that

more. Through social media, they can see if customers are very interested in a product

and then they would push that more, knowing that is what people want.

Do you think that companies can build relationships solely from the use of

Twitter?



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Yes I do, I think there are a lot of companies that are just coming in now that started out

on social media, even companies that don‟t need their websites anymore which is quite

interesting. For somebody in my area, I would be saying to them, if you are small and

have a very regular presence, maybe you don‟t need one as you can connect very easily

with the customers through social media. If you are in a consumer industry, I think it

might work much better through Facebook. I find Facebook very good for business and

for linking to things from it. I think it is mainly consumers from Twitter but there are

lots of connections as well. If you are blogging for a peculiar area, you will pick up a lot

of connections there. I‟d say social media is a little bit stronger for the consumer. I think

Twitter is mainly for consumers again, but with lots of connections as well, if you are

blogging for a certain area, you will pick up some of the networking connections, so

social media is a little bit stronger for consumers. One of my clients have done verywell through it, it made them more of a social thinker and they have achieved over

5,000 and gained over 300 in a month now – that was a very good one. I can see friends

who have worked in the industry and have worked up in Dublin and they are very well

connected through it. A lot of people would have gotten contacts through it and the

interaction through it is great for business. You would obviously need to be online for

the interaction and want them to come to the website to keep it going. I feel that

anything that is a way of commutation is going to work very well all round. There are

an awful lot of benefits from social media but there is a line there too and I advise

people to keep it friendly. I know someone and he says that a lot of people would know

his name and know his profile and he expects that but he doesn‟t want people to know

all about his family and where he spent his holiday. My advice is to separate his

business and keep his life private because there has to be some kind of boundaries. The

thing is you should use both your websites but in a different way, like sometimes there

is a different audience there. I‟m the same with mine – my Facebook one is mainly for

advertising because I think that is more consumer driven as they are in that frame of

mind when they are in that channel for Facebook, while if they are in it for leisure they

are not in the frame of mind for shopping. I think it works really well to have your

business separate. Then again, if you are setting up jobs, you should see what market

you are appealing to and that really works very well on Twitter and Facebook. You do

have to know your boundaries if you are trying to sell something and not to be seen like

it is some sort of scam or having people thinking that you are a stalker. I do think you

have to gain respect on Twitter and Facebook and it has to be mutual. The thing is

firstly to meet people on it and then you get to know them better and have respect for



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them, and them for you. I think you can get to know people online by respect and then

that respect will have to grow and to continue, and that is how things go. I know of a lot

of large companies that have a large following on Twitter and it has helped them a lot,

like Vodafone and O2. They have done very well through it – it is very good for their

customer service, some people have got problems and they are calling up the customer

service going on about it, but now they are putting their notes up on Twitter. Margaret

Smith of Umnumnum has done very well with Twitter. I think it‟s because she has that

kind of personality and she is very social and active on it and she has a very big

following on it. Another big company is Bloggertone – they are very big; because of

social media, they are huge. They have about seven accounts. I would definitely advise

my customers to engage on Twitter though it might be very new to some of the

companies. Even though you might be very sociable, it is not the same as if you aretrying to meet up with people. The thing is, I always stress you do have to give them

respect, be conscious of how you tweet and be compassionate to people. It has to be

personal and individual and you have to have a personality and voice and you have to

be you to be yourself. At times I do see them doing things wrong but it is not always

their fault; with social media, they say that they have to keep the guidelines, and if

something is private and confidential, to keep it that way. I think it is offensive if they

don‟t keep to the guidelines, so if they don‟t understand, they just come back to me and

I will help them with it. Sometimes they are in breach and that is very dangerous –

again, it is a trust thing and if they don‟t keep that, it would affect their reputation. From

the start, you have to be very aware with everything you write down, that people can see

it and you can‟t retract it. I see a lot of it in forms and we have to tell them to go back

and clean up the mess. I feel the important thing is to make them very aware of it from

the start and make sure that before you say something, you think first. I feel I have a

verbal contract with people and I have to consider what I say before I say it. We would

have had comments that had not been thought out properly and got a bit of reaction

from it. You have to make sure to have proper attention to detail for the clients. You

have to be careful with the comments you make, like anything religious. You have to be

careful about political comments too. Some people can pick up on something in a

positive way while others see it in a negative way. I do think people get better over time

as they start getting conscious of what they are doing. It is not something I want to hide

– I want people to see that we are all human and we all have to learn and we all make

mistakes but we learn from them. Nobody is 100 percent transparent but we are dealing

with people‟s businesses and we have to deal with problems the best way we can. I



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think you have to balance things as well and always try to think how you can use things

to your advantage. If you are responding quickly to your customers, then they will do

the same to you and respond quickly to you as well.

What would be the characteristics of a company that is doing badly/having a low

following on Twitter?

I was working with a company – I won‟t say the name – and when they approached me,

they said they were doing badly on Twitter, getting nowhere and doing nothing

business-wise. Then I had a look and every message they had was “offer on this and

that”, they were consistently doing the hard sell and the hard sell does not work.

Occasionally, you can drop little sneaky bits in but in the beginning, you have to be

very careful and build up a relationship before you start selling something. You shouldstart by saying what you are up to, showing a few videos and asking what others are

into. By doing the hard sell, straight away, people just see what you want – it has to be

mutual. I think another big mistake is not responding to people; people are often asking

questions and when they don‟t get a response, they lose interest and will not ask about

something again. If you don‟t bother answering or just give a negative answer, you

won‟t attract people. That is when we start saying to them, we need to know about that

product and you need to start answering people‟s questions. They have to conform to

the rules and not just to delete all the questions they do not want to answer and then

others going on to the site will say, “I could not be bothered with them, they don‟t even

answer.” That gives people a very negative view of things. My advice is to never, ever

ignore a comment and to be very careful in what you say. You have to always respond

head on and people have respect for that. When they did what I told them, it worked a

lot better for them but they had to realise they had to do some work themselves as well

to make social media work for them. The big mistakes are the hard selling, ignoring

comments. I have seen a lot of competitions not being used properly or setting up

profiles instead of business pages. I think people just do not know how things should be

set up and not understanding correctly that what they are doing is not correct. That is the

trade I am in and I have to pull them up on it. I think people should keep their tweets

down, especially at the start – otherwise they will never build up their relationships. It‟s

like in the sales field, you do not just go straight in. You have to keep building the

relationship all the time, there is a background in doing it and a way of doing it. If you

do it right, then the people will start to invite you and then you just keep up a friendship

and it goes from there. In time you generally start to realise what people want or else



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they start to tell you and then you know the time is right. A person will mention “I liked

the blog you did on this or that, have you got anything else about it?” and that‟s how it

goes, they might be interested in it without any hard selling from you. That is the ideal

way of doing it if you can.

If someone told you that they wanted to use one social network to interact with and

learn about their customers and gain respect, which would you pick?

I suppose I prefer Facebook and only because there is so much more you can do with it.

The others are so much more limited – 140 characters and just links and that. It‟s nice,

it‟s good and it‟s direct messaging, yes, I think I would probably go with Facebook. I

like Facebook because you have the calls, the interacting thinking, you have got more to

say with the multimedia and you can give them your e-mail. I know in some companiesI worked with where the thing they did wrong was the profile and then I asked them

why they set it up that way and what their reasons were for maintaining it that way. One

of the reasons was that people could message them that way – it was a marketing thing

which is something I did not appreciate. I feel it is better if you can just give them your

e-mail, and that is the way they set it up on this channel. The one thing is, you can take

a look at your stats and get the impression of posts but it is definitely a concern that you

can‟t because you need to feed off it and keep them in the loop. There are lots of other

ways you can work, that you can send to people on the list, you can ask them to refer

and to send on links. It is a little bit of a concern but you can tag people and stuff but the

thing about that is I am very conscious of tagging people and you have to be very

careful. I think once you get the interactions going and people trust you, then you are

alright. Some people would post breaking news stories just to get people‟s attention. I‟m

not a fan of doing that – if I see something in the title, I want to read about it. Maybe it

is good marketing but it is not for me. By doing that, you may have gotten my attention

on it but that is all. The thing is, if you have a good title, you have to have good contents

as well. Then I would be loyal and come back and really engage in what you are doing.

With regards to SEO in social media, it has already impacted things – especially if I do

any training about blogging, I teach people a little bit about SEO. It would have a bigger

impact on the larger companies and people should always read their blogs and keep in

contact about things and keep keywords in the main contents and keep them in the title.

Your wording in the contents is very important to keep people interested.



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Documents

Assessing the Use of Twitter by Irish SMEs/Entrepreneurs