As the name suggest, social media public relations refers to using social media as a tool for public relations. It involves using social media channels to build brand awareness and credibility of a company or an individual. Through social media, public relations professionals can reach a very large audience, thus improving the outcome of their goals and the overall success of the company or the individual that they are promoting. Are you a public relations specialist that has been sending out press releases to the media, but it seems that you aren’t getting the responses you had hoped for? Now, thanks to social media, organizations aren’t waiting for the media to write their story; instead, they are sharing their stories directly on social media channels.
How Public Relations Specialists Use Social Media
Social media can assist public relations experts in meeting their goals. Some of the ways that public relations experts use social media include:
- To locate influencers. Influencers provide brands with a voice. There are so many influencers to be found on social media, and these entities have extremely large followers. Brands can use these influencers to help promote their products or services, to build or protect their reputations, to establish awareness, and to build trust in consumers. Why? – Because influencers promote a brand, which means that their followers will be more inclined to choose that brand over another one.
- Locating threats. Social media offers the ability to find out about the opinion of the public about a brand before it has the opportunity to turn into a trending topic. Social media experts can proactively seek and address any online threats, such as a customer complaint, which could help them prevent a serious reputation crisis for a brand. This can be extremely important for the success of a business.
- To reach a larger audience. There are literally billions of people that use social media channels on a daily basis. An audience of that size means that brands have the opportunity to reach an even larger audience for themselves. A brand has the opportunity to be seen by people around the world and in segments that they might otherwise not be able to reach.
- To make big announcements. Instead of issuing out a press release and waiting for a media channel to pick up the story, public relations experts can use social media to share the story directly with the followers of a company. This provides them with a much faster way of reaching their audience and makes the news they are sharing more relevant, as people will be in the know much quicker. Examples of announcements PR professionals make on social media include the opening of a new stores, the addition of a new product, changes to a service, and so on.
How to use Social Media for Public Relations
There are several ways that social media can be incorporated into a public relations strategy. Below are some of highly effective ways that you can use social media to your advantage:
- Incorporate social sharing with press releases. If you are going to write a press release, you can support and extend your message by incorporating social sharing. This will allow your press release to become more visible and encourage more interaction with the news and information that it presents.
- Contribute as a guest blogger. By becoming a guest blogger on a popular blog in your industry, you can establish the authority of the products or services that your company offers. Remember to share your expertise in your blog post, make sure you are sharing useful and relevant information, and that you are speaking in a way that readers can relate to you.
- Consider an ambassador program. An ambassador program can help to guarantee that you will have excellent public relations at any given moment. These programs have proven to be highly effective and very useful for companies.
Wrapping it Up
If you want to make the most of public relations, you are going to want to include social media as part of your strategy. Social media will help to boost your efforts and will allow you to see even greater results.
