Tendency of usage of social media tools by the public relationspractitioners: An evaluation on Turkey's 500 biggest ındustrialcorporations

Abstract

The interactive communication in the artificial environment has widened its limits with theusage of the social media tools and has become an inevitable element of the digital era. Theusage of the tools such as social network sharing sites (Myspace, Facebook, Faceparty,Friendster), blogs, e-mail usage, intranet, video conferencing, forums, video sharing sites (suchas Youtube), music sharing sites (Jamendo.com)], business network sites (Linedln, Xing,eAcademy), cooperative web sites (Wikipedia), instant message, vikis (vikipedia), podcasts,training materials sharing (Mozilla s spreadfirefox.com, Linux.org), social bookmarking,bookmarking sites ensuring its users to make online news, stories, music (Digg, del.icio.us,Newsvine, Mixx it, Reddit), personal publication (weblogs, twitter) which take place in thesocial media tools by the public relations practitioners gradually gains importance in terms ofthe public relations practitioners.In this study, the place and importance of social media tools with regards to public relationsand their role in creating a new public relations process are discussed. Accordingly, an onlinequestionnaire form was prepared and sent via e-mail to the public relations practitioners. Thesepublic relations practitioners were determined through the survey results of "Turkey's Top500 Industrial Enterprises 2011 which was conducted regularly by Istanbul Chamber ofIndustry (ISO). An assessment intended to identify the trends and reasons of use of socialmedia tools by the public relations practitioners who work in the biggest companies of Turkeyand their perceptions of social media and traditional media was made.