Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media for Society, Essay Example

Background

Murdoch University Clinical Legal Education program is a locally and internationally recognized institution with significant influence in education and client services. Murdoch also caries out its work through partnership with other legal practitioners, organizations, and students of law. From this partnership, the students are equipped with excellent knowledge of the law and are allowed to sharpen their skills and expertise by practicing what they learn in class as theory. They are given a chance to interact with real-life situations as they practice law. Murdoch also has mentorship programs that are carried out by legal practitioners encouraging the students of law to be focused on their studies even when they face challenges in the course of their studies and social life. Murdoch University Clinical Legal program partnered with the Southern Communities Advocacy Legal Education Service (SCALES) in 1997 to carry out various legal advocacy tasks and educate people more on legal issues.

At Murdoch University, one can combine law with communication. There are several reasons why one needs to study a law degree combined with communication at Murdoch University. First, when a law student combines the law degree with communication, he or she can acquire work experience through a work-integrated learning program that allows the students to intern in any of the partnering organizations such as the Salvation Army, Lifeline and RAC Arena (Murdoch.edu.au, 2019). Second, one can make new friends, have fun, and build a network as a member of the Murdoch Student Law Society. Also, as a law student, you get an opportunity to follow the footsteps of other students who have interned at Channel Seven, ABC, among others. Besides, the program offers real-world experience for the student,

Problem

Currently, the major problem that Murdoch Law Clinic face include lack of early engagement with the students of law in Murdoch. It also faces a challenge in the nurturing a human rights culture within the Murdoch University law community. MLC also struggles with its online presentation, forming a network with its local and international practitioners and connecting students to these institutions. Maintenance of a connection with the alumni is also a challenging issue in Murdoch Law Clinic. However, a cohesive communications approach could help to increase consciousness and participation within the clinic further and reinforce the existing networks.

SWOT Analysis

In this section, we shall look at the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats which Murdoch University School of Law faces. Analyzing the environment of an organization is essential as it allows the key stakeholders and the management to know the parts of the organization which needs improvements and the things the organization needs to be cautious about as they may bring it down if not well taken care of. The organization is expected to carry out the analysis accurately by avoiding gray areas or conceived beliefs and focusing on real-life events. A robust analysis, therefore, allows the owners of businesses, leaders of organizations, and other stakeholders and investors too if the company, industry, or line of product will be strong or weak and why (Grant, 2019).

Strengths

• One of the significant advantages of the Murdoch University Law Clinic is that the university has already established networks of law practitioners through various partnerships. It can provide quality knowledge on legal matters and to give the students enough experience for practice on legal issues when they get out of school.
• When the students go for internships solicited by the university in the various local and international legal organizations, they can learn more and become competent in their profession.
• The presence of supportive partners is also the strength of the MLC.

Opportunities

• One of the opportunities MLC has is becoming part of the Law in the Community program, which will have multiple benefits to the students. The program is likely to benefit students by creating awareness about the law and informing students in high schools about legal advocacy and their rights as provided by the law. Also, it will allow the delivery of instructions on various legal issues from different topics, including sexual conduct or misconduct, drugs, crime, among others.
• The students will also have an opportunity to share personal experiences about studying law at the university, which will allow them to have more information about the various legal issues.

Goals

• MCL aspires to become the best legal educator program in locally and globally
• MLC is focused on ensuring the communities are aware of the law, democracy and human rights

Objectives

• The MLC project is about the creation and maintenance of a social justice and human rights culture at the local as well as international levels. To address the identified problems and opportunities, Murdoch Law Clinic intends to implement a new strategic communication initiative over one year starting from December 2019.
• This project aims to implement a digital marketing campaign for human rights and social justice teamed with some conventional strategies to increase engagement during the lengthy timeline of the year.
• One of the measurable ways which will help to achieve the stated objective I the use of social media, including Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, complemented with traditional devices such as flyers. This can be done through the creation of a content calendar with several scheduled posts by date and distributing the content across the various social media platforms available to ensure that the information reaches as many students and law practitioners as possible. By doing so, the project will achieve its goals and will operate within the stipulated budget. By launching the campaign, the MLC communication project aims at achieving the following objectives at the end of 2020:
• Raise and increase the Murdoch Law Clinic awareness to 80% of the target population within the first eight months and 100% by December 2020.
• Create deliberate teamwork between the Murdoch Student Law Society (MSLS) and Murdoch Law Clinic
• Educate the law students on how they can engage in corporate social responsibilities
• Inform the undergraduate law students at Murdoch about the various opportunities provided by Murdoch Law Clinic

Target publics

The target audience is simply the potential customers. It is essential to define the target audiences who are directly crucial in helping one to achieve the various communications objectives. These audiences are reached using different media and tactics (Programmemed.eu, 2013). The target audience is comprised of multiple stakeholders, collaborators, and students’ groups. The audience of the key messages communicated by this project or the persons who the project intends to establish a relationship with include the following:

The Key Publics

• Undergraduate law students
• Other law students
• Students alumni of Murdoch University
• Australian Human Rights Commission
• Southern Communities Advocacy Legal Education Service SCALES
• Collaborators and partners
• Aboriginal Family Law Services
• Law Admissions Consultative Committee
• Law Council of Australia
• Leo Cussen Centre for law
• Legal practice board of WA
• Allied Barristers
• Local and international legal communities
• Allied high schools
• Non-profit organizations

Message

The message is the communicated information that is intended to reach the target audience. This section discusses three main messages which the project communicates to its target audience.  The message refers to the information conveyed to the audience via words in speech or writing, signs, and symbols. It also refers to the content of the communication process (Nordquist, 2019). The messages contained in the MLC communication project are denoted by the scope of the project and the objectives. These messages include;

• The various opportunities which Murdoch Law Clinic provides for the students including legal advocacy and rights of the students
• Ways through which the law students can participate in corporate social responsibilities to ensure they give back to the community, and
• Information on illegal matters such as sexual conduct or misconduct and drug-substance use among young people.

Strategy

This section discusses the guide to achieving the set objectives for the project. According to Taylor (2019), having a plan for the project helps the project manager to reach the organizational goals faster. Taking time to strategize and plan for the project helps one to identify what he or she should be working on and what is going to move the project closer to where it is intended to be. The MLC communication campaign project will include the implementation of a digital marketing campaign together with traditional media.

Channels and Tactics

The channels and tactics used adopted for this campaign project refer to how the campaign will be carried out, and the various ways the selected media will be used to achieve the set goals. For this project, the campaign will be conducted via social media platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook, together with other traditional media such as the use of flyers. The reason for adopting these media for communication is that social media is the widely used type of media today, especially by the youths. Social media is advantageous due to its connectivity. Millions of people can connect from anywhere and share the communicated information (Ahmad, 2016). It, therefore, means that social media will offer an excellent platform for marketing the campaign and, therefore, will reach many people.

Facebook

I am choosing Facebook because it is the largest social media platform today, with more than 1.4 billion users visiting the site every day (Jacobson, 2018). Also, about 80% of internet users use Facebook (Standberry, 2019). It, therefore, means that the Facebook ad about the campaign project will reach many people compared to other media platforms. MLC, thus, intends to consolidate all their Facebook accounts to have one page and group. The reason for merging the accounts into one page and group is because of its advantages. Combining the accounts creates a single hub where the customers interact with the information or brand that I have posted (Honigman, 2010). Facebook updates will be done twice every week.

Instagram

I am choosing this platform because it is considered as the best for engagement and ability to connect to our followers.  Also, its visual presentation is attractive, especially to the youth more than any other platform (Brianna, 2019). The platform will, therefore, reach most of the young learners. In sponsored ads, we will be able to run regular targeted ads and retarget the audience. Instagram postings will be done once per week.

YouTube

I choose to use this platform because it offers many targeting options based on topic, demographics, keywords, categories, and placements. Advertising on YouTube is measurable as one can track success through digital devices, and I can ask my campaign representatives to ask the customers where they heard about the service. It is also cost-effective, costing about $0.10 per ad (Birkbeck, 2017). Live advertisements will be done once per week, and ads will also run once every week.

Website

I choose to advertise the campaign via a website since this platform is the image of the overall organization. It is also cost-effective and allows one to target ideal customers. Everything about the organization will be found on the website anytime by the customers, and they can contact us via the contacts provided on the web. Website updates will be done every month for the whole year.

Timeline Update

This section highlights the duration of time which the project is intended to take. The MLC campaign project is a one-year project. Implementation of the strategies for campaigning will start on December 2019. However, the actual campaign will be launched in January 2020 and conducted throughout the year, which means it will end on December 2020.

Budget

A budget of $5,000 is allocated for the sensitization and campaign program. An approximated $100 will be used on every hour spent on the project as a consultancy fee. 10% of the total budget will be for a contingency fee. The amount can be extended through donations or in-kind support. Instead of hiring a professional photographer, MLC intends to use the law students at the university, and therefore, it will cost the university a little amount of money to carry out the project.

Budget Breakdown

Evaluation of the Media

Assessment of social media will allow the MLC to conduct a focused campaign (Raudeli?nien? et al., 2018).

Formative

Formative research involves the collection of data from a small number of stakeholders (Lambert et al. 2014). Its purpose is to provide insight into the content of social media, use, deployment, and feasibility. It includes:

• It will involve assessment of the budget to know whether it will be enough to launch the campaign
• Evaluation of the availability of the various social media platforms adopted for use in the campaign.
• Available external sources of funds if we run out of budget

Modification

• International expert assessment- It will involve an evaluation of the content reach, sales, traffic, frequency, impressions, audience growth, leads, and relevance score of the adopted medium.
• Determination of significances of essential factors that influence campaigning through social media.

Summative

• We have all the required resources and have advertised as planned, and then our campaign will be a success.
• The campaign will be successful when it reaches 97% of the targeted people by the end of the year 2020
• The social media platforms will be able to achieve its objectives at the end of the year.
• Effectiveness of Facebook advertising will be measured by reaching 96% reach of targeted people
• Instagram reach efficiency will be 95%
• YouTube effectiveness will range between 95%-99% of the targeted audience
• 60% reach using flyers will indicate the success of the

References

Ahmad B. (2016) 10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media for Society. Retrieved from https://www.techmaish.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-social-media-for-society/

Birkbeck, K. (2017). 5 Benefits Of Youtube Advertising For Small Businesses. Retrieved from https://www.bluecorona.com/blog/youtube-advertising-benefits

Brianna (2019). Why Use Instagram to Promote Your Small Business? Retrieved from https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/why-use-instagram/

Grant, M. (2019). Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/swot.asp

Honigman B. (2019)  The Pros And Cons Of Merging Your Facebook Page And Place Events Mobile Social Media Social Media

Jacobson, B. (2018). Top 5 Advantages of Facebook Marketing for Your Business. Retrieved from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-marketing-advantages/229849/

Lambert, D. N., Bishop, L. E., Guetig, S., & Frew, P. M. (2014). A formative evaluation of a social media campaign to reduce adolescent dating violence. JMIR research protocols, 3(4), e64.

Murdoch.edu.au. (2019). Law + Communication. [online] Available at: https://www.murdoch.edu.au/study/courses/course-details/law–communication-(combined)-(bcommun)(llb)# [Accessed 21 Oct. 2019].

Nordquist, R. (2019). What Is a Message in Communication? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/message-communication-term-1691309

Programmemed.eu. (2013). [online] Available at: https://www.programmemed.eu/fileadmin/PROG_MED/Communication_projets/Communication_GUIDANCE/Factsheet_2.pdf [Accessed 22 Oct. 2019].

Raudeli?nien?, J., Davidavi?ien?, V., Tvaronavi?ien?, M., & Jonuška, L. (2018). Evaluation of advertising campaigns on social media networks. Sustainability, 10(4), 973.

Standberry, S. (2019). Top 25 Benefits of Facebook Advertising & Why You Should Be Using Facebook Advertising

Taylor, A. (2019). Strategic Planning and Management Insights Strategic Planning Helps You Achieve Your Organizational Goals Faster.