Global corporate communications under influence of social media

Abstract

The past years have witnessed an ever-growing importance of corporate communications as a significant part of the value of businesses is created in communication by means of images, conceptions, stories and experiences. At the same, particularly information technology has rapidly changed the business environment making the Internet a major media. The expansion of social media sets new challenges for solid public relations as well as corporate communications management. The main purpose of the study is to discover the many levels, on which the social media affects the corporate communications of an organization. The first objective is to examine strategic corporate communications under influence of social media, and the second objective is to examine challenges of media monitoring in breaking media environment. The empirical research is executed by interviewing corporate communications experts at Nokia Corporation.

As a result of the study, the role of the public relations is to effectively build bridges between the operational field of the and the corporate strategic planning. The social media represents the scattered media, and therefore the corporate communications strategy must pay particular attention to communicating the company's daily messages in an explicit form externally as well as internally. As the corporate communications shift online and into the social media, the role of the consumer relations changes within the company. The incredible speed and global coverage of the Internet has diminished significantly the communications organization's control. But on the other hand, now it is possible for the company to control the communications more than ever, if it is able to create an interesting forum for the consumer within the social media, and therefore become itself a media channel. Even though the term "social media" is topical and describes well the phenomenon, it is becoming a part of everyday corporate communications, and therefore there is no need for the division between the traditional media and the social one. In terms of media monitoring, during the radical change in the media a proactive way of thinking is required, since the historical reporting contains only missed opportunities. Proactive discussions may bring up cases that could cause e.g. clear business disadvantages .