Social Media and Effective Public Relations Practice in Nigeria: Implications, Challenges and Strategies (Published)
Since the advent of the social media, pundits have been arguing over its impact on public relations (PR) practice. While some believe that the profession is heading to the grave, others posit that social media actually facilitate and catalyze PR work. This paper is of the position that the prediction of ‘death’ for PR is a metaphor describing of the consequence of the failure to adopt new methods of PR engagement in a social media era. Drawing evidence from extant literature, the paper scrutinizes the ambiguities surrounding the conceptions of ‘new’ and ‘social’ media, and explores the boundaries of PR influence in a digitized media space. Through the lens of ‘Social Construction Theory’ and the ‘Impression Management Theory’, the essay examines the implications and challenges of social media adaptation, for PR practice in a developing country like Nigeria. It interrogates the impact of the organic social media conversations on brand perception and offers recommendations for optimizing the use of media tools for PR purposes.
Keywords: Globalization, New Media, Public Relations, Social media, brand perception, digital communication, virtualization
Business Environment: Globalization and Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Nigeria (Published)
Business environment has been a vital factor to consider in evaluating SMEs survival and growth in the highly competitive and globalized world. The objective of the paper was to assess literature on the effect of environment and globalization on small and medium scale enterprises in Nigeria. Based on the assessment of the literature reviewed, the paper concludes that the Nigerian SMEs has no capacity to compete with foreign manufacturers, due to a number of benefits they enjoy in their home countries that are absent in Nigeria. Foreign manufactured goods are of better quality and are produced at lower cost when compared with cost of production of goods by the Nigerian SMEs. In addition, the Nigerian business environment is not stable; infrastructure decay, policy fluctuation, high cost of doing business, endemic corruption in governance, high interest rate, high taste for imported goods, galloping inflation, insecurity and porous border and multiple tax system, are among problems of SMEs development in Nigeria. The paper recommends that to benefit from the inevitable globalization by the Nigerian SMEs, efforts should be made by the Nigerian government and SMEs to creating favourable business environment that is devoid of high cost of production; good policy to protect and encourage SMEs; favourable economic policies that will encourage local goods patronage; regulation of interest rate to single digit; adequate security, harmonization of tax system to avoid multiplicity, and so forth in Nigeria.
Keywords: Business Environment, Globalization, Medium, Scale Enterprises, Small