‘I am supporting Anna Hazare, if you do too, then post this as your status message.’
In my 500-odd friend-list on FB, there are approximately 350 people who have extended their support to Anna Hazare.
The people who came out on the fore were just a handful representative of all the supporters Anna Hazare has gathered. The government has been lashed and people have openly condemned their acts.
The entire movement has become so big through the power of social networking. FB, Twitter, SMS are the vehicles that gave Anna Hazare the mass following.
The awareness which spread gathered the support the government saw yesterday. The online support has been enough to mobilise the numbers across the country.
In this day and age, social media is the biggest tool for reaching out to people. Anyone who does not understand its power is living in anti-diluvian times.
PR is all about reaching to various publics and creating awareness. Any agency should capitalize on FB and use it to best advantage. This is the cheapest and the most effortless measure, is backed by word-of-mouth and is independent of the mainstream media.
In this day and age we cannot afford to function at the optimum without FB. At any given time, FB is within the reach of 750 million users. All companies, movies, causes, etc are trying to be put up on FB because of its reach.
It is a platform which gives us the freedom to express our opinions, gather our share of voice and look for mass appeal.
Twitter is another such platform. The big-wigs like Anna Hazare, Mahindra, Amitabh Bachchan and the MNCs share their latest developments on these platforms.
Social Media is the biggest tool we have today and we ignore it only to our own disadvantage.