Social media as a part of PR for small and medium businesses: how to survive and succeed

Ing. Anna Isakova

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Audiences of social media nowadays are growing exponentially. Many companies include promotion in social networks to their PR plan. Major objective of diploma thesis is to find the strategy how small and medium size businesses can survive and succeed when doing promotions in social media networks. First after overview of social media networks is purposed a classification of social media and their business potential. Second social media networks are observed as a part of PR, how to set goals for campaigns and write social media plan, how define target audience, determine most efficient social media channels and time to communicate with target audience, how to determine relevant message for target audience, how to perform audit of social media strategic plan. To examine strategies suggested by social media researchers social media plan is applied to existing software company ControlStyle. To justify social media strategic plan were set three goals with key performance indicators: total traffic from company`s social media profiles to company`s websites should be 100 unique users by the end of the week; to sell one service or software and get one participant in referral program by the end of the week; number of total «social» interactions should be in sum 200, including likes, mentions, shares in all company`s social media channels by the end of the week. By the end of experiment first goal is reached, 107 unique users came from social networks to company`s websites in total. Second goal is partly achieved, nothing was sold, one new person took part in company`s referral program. Third goal was reached, 288 “social” interaction in total was received from all company`s social media channels. Solution for small and medium businesses doing promotions in social media networks is to write coherent social media plan, identify social media goals and their KPI, adjust campaign continuously and perform rigorous audit of campaign`s results.

Keywords

Social media in PR, small and medium size businesses, social media plan.

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 18. 4. 2014

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 17. 6. 2015
• Supervisor: PhDr. Karel Eliáš, CSc.
• Reader: PhDr. Marie Koubová

University of Finance and Administration

Master programme / field:
Economics and Management / Marketing Communication