A public relations package for Philippine Skating Union: Facilitating online stakeholder engagement

• Main Authors: Crisostomo, Tracey Anne, Zeta, Jericho Tomas
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: Philippine Skating Union; Skating > Philippines; Skaters > Philippines
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/9583
• Institution: De La Salle University

Philippine Skating Unions social media messages in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which are about their advocacy towards sustainability of ice sports in the country, receive limited online stakeholder engagement (i.e. likes, shares, and comments) from its current skaters, particularly active figure and speed skaters. The executive assistant, who acts as the social media manager of the organization, primarily use their social media accounts to communicate about international and local competitions and training camps. Facebook id for communicating news, Instagram for aesthetic shot-by-shot photos, and Twitter for live results f competitions. Their strategy is to communicate community-building messages by featuring skaters across social media platforms to engage its stakeholders. This thesis report is informed by Lovejoy and Saxtons (2012) information, community, and action framework and Saxton and Waters (2014) measurement of online stakeholder engagement. Overall, the communication audits revealed that PHSU receives limited engagement with its current skaters because PHSU does not use dialogic strategies and they do not ensure that current skaters read their posts. Current skaters are more likely to like, share, and comment on community messages. They also seldomly post on their social media platforms where their redundant contents are mostly directed to the national team rather than majority of the current skaters. The execution of the online public relations plan, which covers social media activities and event plan, which launches Philippine Skating Unions ice skating day, increased levels of engagement among current skaters considering that past engagers were other stakeholders. Facebook is notably the most dominating platform for engagement compared to Instagram, and Twitter in likes, shares, and comments, while Twitter produced the least engagements among the three platforms followed by Instagram. The event plan garnered 64 attendees of only expecting up to 50 guests, and majority of guests found the vent very satisfactory in terms of enjoyment, and satisfactory in terms of garnered interests, engagement, awareness of plans, and wanting to know more about the organization. The social media manual incorporated the classification of social media messages of Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) as guidelines and the gained insights from the interviewed social media expert. Given these findings, the researchers recommend a public relations plan that also focuses on the offline relationship of the organization with its current skaters and the national team. The plan should also be able to cover the relationship of the organization with its stakeholders in terms of engagement and fostering dialogue.