ABSTRACT
Chapter 14 explores writing for social media and how public relations practitioners are tasked with crafting content for their organizations’ social media channels. The chapter presents various definitions for the term social media offered by academics, authors and industry experts, and provides an overview of different types of social media, including social networks, media sharing networks, discussion forums, bookmarking and content curation networks, consumer review networks, blogging and publishing networks, interest-based networks, social shopping networks, sharing economy networks and anonymous social networks. Social media’s place in public relations is examined, and strategies are offered for crafting captions and engaging in customer service and crisis response on social media. The chapter concludes with two exercises related to social media writing: an exercise crafting a social media caption and an exercise engaging in customer service on social media.
