The Use of Social Media in Public Relations: A Case of Facebook in the Ghanaian Financial Services Industry

Abstract

The technological advancement of the 21^st century has revolutionized the business environment in such a way that corporate communication has been migrated from offline into online. The use of social media in corporate communication has resulted in the use of Facebook as a Public relations (PR) tool for organizations. The purpose of this research is to find out how organizations use Facebook as a PR tool to foster relationship with current and potential customers as well as the general public. Purposive sampling is used to select four companies from the financial services sector of the Ghana club 100. Content analysis is used for data collection and both qualitative and quantitative analysis are utilised for data analysis.  The results indicate that all the selected companies use Facebook often as PR tool; however there is more one way communication resulting in less interaction to increase the relationship and foster closer relationship between the organization and its public. The interaction is more from the organization to the customers and the public with few responses from the customers. There is a need for more two way interaction between the organizations and their publics.

Keywords: Public Relations, Social Media, Facebook, Technology, Publics, and communication