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How Social Media can Help with Public Relations – 4 winning social media strategies for PR

It’s no more news that traditional media is giving way to social and digital has taken over. As a result, it has become more important than ever to bring your marketing and PR activities up to speed with online trends. So, leveraging social media to enhance and support your Public Relation efforts is vital today if you want to maximize the world of media relations, and your business is about fostering serious growth.

On a more strategic level, Planning and executing an effective social media influenced PR campaign actually takes more than a few Tweets, Facebook posts, and calls to the local newspaper to build brand awareness, increase sales, and drive more traffic to your business. It now requires more of Strategy, well researched, valuable content generation, and engagement—among other things which should be taken into account when developing the social media aspects of a PR campaign.
Are you sending out press releases and waiting for the media to write about you?

Instead of waiting for the media to write their story, Smart organizations are choosing to share those stories via social media. It’s no news that Social media has come a long way — and with the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus and so many other newer platforms, it has become as much a professional staple as a personal one.

Considering the fact that social media is perfect for improving direct engagement with both customers and the press, it is amazing how possible is it that so many businesses (especially small or online-based businesses) are failing to utilize social media for PR?

Social media and publicity go hand in hand. In fact, they need each other in order to function most effectively. When a news story breaks now, it typically happens on Twitter.  Broadcast news channels now often refer to tweets as part of their newscast, media live-tweet events as they occur and TV stations put shows on the air with content exclusively based on social media. In short, it’s all closely connected.

Are you wondering how you can integrate social media with your public relations efforts? Here are 5 winning strategies that will help you get started.

1. Consider Guest Blogging or Contributing for a Popular Media.

Offering to write guest posts on well-known blogs or media outlets is a fast way to add authority to your company’s services.

According to Jennifer of Sprout Social, the advantages of guest blogging is twofold: first is you are able to share your expertise with someone else’s audience, hopefully one that you want to target, then you’ll receive a backlink to your site, giving yourself credibility for search engines.

2. Use Influencer-Marketing to Help PR

One of the biggest creative avenues for enhancing your PR efforts is to incorporate influencer marketing. For companies with products, sending out free products in exchange for an honest (and hopefully positive) review is the easiest way to keep your products in front of your audience’s eyes.

You can use influencer marketing for blog posts, social media posts or any other type of content creation. The most common scenario is paying celebrities to post about your products. But if you can’t afford a big-name celebrity, you can get creative with finding niche or micro-influencers.

3. Interact with Journalists and Bloggers

When you want new or more coverage on your products, most people will immediately think of interacting with journalists. While this can be a good route, it is also good to keep in mind that journalists are people, too. This means that the rules of good social media engagement are still in play here.

For instance, instead of stalking a journalist on Twitter and boring them with a cold-pitch of your brand, rather get to know their interests, their written topics and where they write. Like you would with a customer, build up a trusted relationship before you launch a new product.

Here are some ways to build up the trust:

-Share their articles on your personal platforms and be sure to include their username

-Be helpful. When they ask for sources, offer up some ideas instead of offering yourself as a source

-Interact with them on a conversational level. Avoid promotional material.

-Think of value you can add in exchange for the favor you’re asking for

Nobody wants to be sold, not even you!

4. Incorporate Social Media into Your Press Release Strategy

When you craft a press release, are you making sure that it’s also social media friendly? If you post releases on your website, make sure viewers can easily share them with social sharing buttons. In addition to friendly sharing options, you’ll also want to ensure the release shows up optimally on all the networks.

Public Relations is no longer limited to sending out cold emails to journalists and hoping for a response. Today, creativity is the key. There are more ways now to talk about your brand in a variety of content types. From working with an influencer, to producing a video. To guest blogging on known sites, to SEM, you can generate positive press Image much more easily.

 

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