INSTAGRAM AS A PUBLIC RELATIONS TOOL: A RESEARCH ON 50 COMPANY USE SOCIAL MEDIA

In modern societies social media plays an important role for both individuals and organizations on tending to their targets, has become a basic tool as both a personal life style and an activity delivering tool for organizations. people’s communication style with others and also with organizations has begun to change by the fast evolution of communication technologies such as internet, smart phone etc. the organizations can find an opportunity reach some different target groups besides their own target group thanks to such social media tools as facebook, twitter or instagram. by doing this the organizations can have time and financial occasions. instagram appeared for smart phones in 2010 as a free mobile application which can be downloaded from app store and google play. instagram is basicly a photo share application but it has been used densely by the organizations as a marketing tool for showing their products because instagram can provides impressive communication and visual explanation. because of this feature, instagram has become a continually used social media platform by both individuals and organizations. in this study, it is aimed to present how a social network application instagram has been used by the organizations as a public relations tool. according to this, “sosyal marka 100” announced by ekonomist has been taken as population and the first 50 company from that list has been taken as sample. it has been checked whether these sample companies have an official instagram account and those which have an account have been analized according to their sharings in between 27.10.2015 and 27.11.2015 for brand idendity, brand awareness, interaction, content and sales promotion features.