SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS, TRENDS, OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICE IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA
This study examined the influence of social media on PR. Specifically, it examined the social media analytic tools, trends, opportunities as well as implications of social media adoption on PR with focus on practitioners in Lagos State. Interviews were conducted with selected PR practitioners in Lagos to obtain facts and views for this study. Findings revealed that social media has greatly influenced the practice of PR. However, social media use is shaped by communication strategy, objectives, engagement strategy, and the target audience. Furthermore, the common trends in use among practitioners include influencer push/influencer PR, listening and analytic (software) tools, brand neutralization, hashtagging, sponsored tweet/posts and use of social media pages of established news outlets. The result also showed that analytic tools like Hootsuite, Meltwater, Sprout Social are used for social media management and engagement. Therefore, social media has completely altered the pattern of corporate communication with its transient and ephemeral nature which makes it difficult for afterthought communications to be retrieved, deleted, or sometimes reviewed. But when compared with conventional media, social media provides better opportunities for wider reach, precise targeting, audience analytic, instant/immediate feedback, location-based messaging, and better audience measurement. Keywords: Social Media, Public Relations, PR tools, Modern Public Relations