Community engagement.

According to Putman, social capital is defined as features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions. As I understand, building bondage among individuals within their communities is the core of this concept because the relationships among individuals will improve their communities or societies by having individuals act together and trust each other. With this theory, a good society would be consist of beneficial relationships among individuals. I think the problem here is the way of achieve this goal. 

 For example, in a case of the Korean government, they've tried to trigger interests from people by making people feel unsafe with the North Korea. In 1960s Korea, the government made people  associated strongly against the North Korea. People who got scared of the North Korea built cooperative atmosphere together, advocating the government's policy against the North Korea and had highly united communities. With this kind of social capital where people were highly supportive, it was much easier for the government to execute their policies and hold their power. This kind of social capital can be seen as boding social capital and some politicians are still using this strategy. 

 According to this example, social capital is needed because it can help organizations or governments execute their policies easily and work with public efficiently. I admit that social capital is necessary. However, the important thing in social capital is they way to achieve goals. That is the task given to public relations practitioners. PR practitioners should be able to promote community mind to public to build healthy social capital. For instance of this kind of promotion, I took a class in the US last year and the teacher encouraged the students to constitute groups together and to plan how to engage in the communities and the students actually had to do community services or civic engagement actions. This could be a good example for promoting social capital among the local students. In addition to, this class was facilitating the relationships among the students of the class. I know these days, societies are getting diverse and consist of a number of various individuals. Nevertheless, the individuals still share a common issue the fact they are the organizing parts their communities. 

 It is easy to think about oneself as an individual, "I". However, once an individual realize that "I"s are forming "WE" such as their friends, families or colleagues and "WE"s are forming "ALL" which can refer to their communities, then "I" would recognized that "I" am the part of the community and able to affect the community in any ways. Thus, the important role of PR practitioners would be to enlighten individuals of communities with beneficial campaigns to the communities and bring community minds. PR practitioners should know what people are interested about their communities and share information about the issues with people and try to make people engage in the issue. 

PRs mind-map

What is related to Public Relations?!

Who get the benefits?

  

One of the main goals for many organizations is making profits. For an organization, since it is related to making profits, having benefits is very important and it is what they mainly care about. An organization cannot make profits alone itself. They need customers or clients who would like to use their service or products. That's why an organization can be easily affected by public. Public is their customer group. So building good relationship with public is a significant task for organizations. 

   In building relationship with public, an organization should not only focus on benefits for itself, but also focus on benefits for public. So there need win-win strategies. That's why an organization should support its public or communities. Pursuing mutual benefits is important and this can make an organization listen and pay attention to public. Listening to public can have the organization understand public and interact with them. When an organization tries to interact with the external public, they also start to build loyalty with the organization because they would feel they are respected by the organization. Feeling respected is important. Human being is very emotional and always wants to be respected and considered as important being.

  If an organization actually respects its public and wants to have them involved in decision-making processes, collaborative relationship between two groups can be developed. In this kind of relationship, the organization and the public consider each other as partner and there exist trust and commitment between them. To an organization, having dialogues with public also can increase trust and commitment from the public. Dialogues are relational dialogues where both participate with relational goals. In dialogues, (or communications) transparency is an also important factor to increase trust between each other. Transparency can be increased by sharing information and resolving issues to benefit all stakeholders (an organization and the public). Having face-to-face dialogues can be also helpful and increase intimacy. 

   Developing relationship with public is very important for an organization. However, keeping relationship can be more important for the organization. Since public is very sensitive and emotional with an organization making profits from public, an organization should be always opened to public and ready to communicate with them, not just talk to them but also listen to them. An organization should keep its words to public and show it. 

Contingency Theory in Communication

  Contingency theory tries to explain the stance of an organization towards their public. The stance is on a continuum of accommodation and advocacy on the other side of the continuum.


 When an organization's stance is likely to be advocacy; it means that they don't pay attention to the environments, don't interact with their public, have closed system, and have internal orientation. This kind of stance can be considered as two-way asymmetrical communication since the organization don't want to interact with their public, but just notify the public about the organization because the organization don't take the public's opinion significant. The organization try to appeal themselves to the public but the communication mostly flows from the organization to the public.


  Thus, in the stance of advocacy, an organization mainly holds and controls the power. Because the organization thinks they know the best.


 On the other hand, in the accommodation stance, an organization actively interact with their public. The organization respect and adopt their public's opinion and share the power with them. This stance can be seen as two-way symmetrical communication where the company try to accept the public and appreciate them. This kind of communication is what the contingency theory proposes. In the accommodate stance, an organization listens to the public, has open system, understanding-based communication and they are more innovative. Also, the organization and the public keep the interdependent relationship when the organization is in this stance.

 In current society, stance of accommodation sounds more suitable because in the stance, an organization can  flexibly deal with various unpredictable situations. Also, since they respect  and pay attention the external public, they can see what the public wants from them. In that way, the public's satisfaction towards the organization also can be increased.






 They are many variables that affect an organization's tendency of its stance. As I feel, there can be too many variables, even more than the stated ones from the contingency theory. Even a small event or factor can really affects. From the theory, one of the interesting variables to me is the public relations access to dominant coalition. Public relation practitioner not only deals with the external public but also the internal decision makers. Even though how hard a practitioner try to promote an organization, the final decision is made by its dominant coalition, or the board. Hence, one of the important tasks for PR practitioners would be to enlighten dominant coalition. How to do this? I think that's why PR practitioners need to acquire expertise and to be open minded.

Benefit Cosmetics. How they communicate with their customers.

Benefit Cosmetics is a cosmetic company. Their Facebook is very active and they build good relationships with their customers through the page. 285,200 like this Facebook page. Their Facebook page shows their catalogs, before&after pictures, events, new products and news. They keep updating new things on their page.

Through the page, people can also easily give their voices to the company, with discussions or wall posts. People can rate and review the products and not only the company but others can see them.

Their communication can be said as two-way symmetrical because they respect their customers' opinions. For example, they show the ratings of their products by their customers even though the ratings are not always five starts. This rating&review could be considered when others want to buy the company's products.  It means that the customers actually give some helps (even indirectly) to the company and the company seems to understand it well.


And they promotes understanding about their company to people through the Facebook page. They even introduces San Francisco where the company started. 


They encourage communications with public through Twitter and Youtube Channel as well.




I would just like to say that they may improve their communications by having more opportunities for public to have conversations with them. Also, rating&review may not enough to believe the products because the reviews are quite short. I'd like make a blog to have reviews in more detail so that the reviews can be more reliable.



Facebook 
http://www.facebook.com/benefitcosmetics?sk=notes



Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/benefitcosmetics


Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/benefitbeauty

What we think real is real? (Berger)

 Have you ever thought about the question? Do you believe what you think real is real?


people seem to consider what media shows you as reality. This affects people's view of the world, and construct reality in their mind. And then again, these people spread their reality to others (through communications) and again. Thus, we can say that reality is constructed by social communications. What we believe as reality is actually built by people.

 As we all know, everyone has different background, experiences, cultures and so on and so on. So everyone interpret the world differently with their own reality. It means that it is impossible to see the whole reality of the world, but we are just getting closer little by little by communicating. (It can be also said it is by learning or experiencing. But I want to focus on communications and learning or experiencing is also happened by communicating.) Getting closer can mean that expanding view of reality.


  If an organization's will is wrong interpreted by others, since they have different reality, that can cause a crisis. Hence, an organization needs to try to communicate more with public to reduce the gap of realities between the organization and public. This is why PR is needed.


-Sunhee Kim

Trichology Investment Group

Trichology Investment Group is a hair treatment company in Tallinn.


This prezi is about an analysis of the company's current communication way and suggest some ways to improve the communications with their customers.




http://prezi.com/dxtjfxsl4ziu/trichology-investment-group/


(It was done by me and two other girls for our presentation in marketing class.)