The use of social media and the behavioural change sparked by how individuals and organisations use it has profoundly affected the practice of corporate public affairs globally.

The social media revolution − and a revolution it is, as it was foisted on corporations and governments in particular with little time to evolve − has affected the pace at which issues evolve and play out, and has truncated the time in which corporations and governments are expected to respond or react to issues, outrage, and demands for information.

From about 2010, many social media users were demanding corporations engage with social media platforms as part of stakeholder interaction.

From about 2012, when Twitter became a popular platform for opinion and another public square for social discourse, corporate unease at becoming involved in dialogue across social media channels because of the concerns about reputational and legal risk among senior management and in-house lawyers began to abate.

Social media policies and guidelines steered large companies and business associations into the connected media universe, most frequently led by corporate public affairs teams that had been monitoring advocacy online by the organisation’s stakeholders.

By 2015 – 2016, the attractiveness of rapid and economic dialogue directly with stakeholders (including customers) via social media channels was embraced by corporations, industry groups, and some government departments.

B2C corporations were the quickest to adapt to building social media capability and capacity, working with colleagues in the marketing management function and third-party suppliers to generate content to engage social political stakeholders on platforms used by the company, and platforms preferred by stakeholders.

From this time most corporations were not considering whether they should ‘do’ social media, but how – and how they should build and organise capability to do so.

Initially, many companies established business units within the external communications and media relations disciplines to develop social media strategy and execute it.

Today most corporations have integrated social media strategy into broader corporate public affairs strategy. While about half of corporations in Asia Pacific manage a specialist social media unit in corporate public affairs to develop social media strategy and campaigns, execution, including content generation, is managed across the whole of corporate public affairs.

This sees many more corporate public affairs practitioners in all disciplines generating content in what is effectively industrialisation of the function. Good practice internal and external corporate communications includes a ‘social first’ approach – considering first up if execution should be via social media if such a tactic can achieve an effective outcome.

As well, employees and many external stakeholders can be best engaged in dialogue via a social media channel or channels because such platforms are their preferred mode of non-face-to-face communication. This means that instead of the traditional ‘push’ mode of corporate communications, the function has had to change the way it communicates and organises itself so that it can support ongoing dialogue with stakeholders (including employees).

The capability to rapidly reach and have conversations with stakeholders via social media channels is especially important to issues management and the issues management cycle (the cycle is markedly more rapid today than before the advent of social media), and to how crises are managed (crises can play out physically in the natural and built environment and online simultaneously).

Social media strategy development and performance is one of the most benchmarked areas of corporate public affairs practice (2019 – 2020 State of Public Affairs in Australia).