How to Leverage PR using Social Media?

Public relations have seen huge change in the mode of communication strategies with the rise of social media marketing. Digital marketing has enabled new forms of communication tools which have enabled organizations in better engagement with stakeholders. Public Relation Agencies has also embraced this new form of communications, but the biggest difficulty remains on incorporating both these forms together. Here are few techniques which can help a PR Professional to adapt social media for PR. 

• Social Sharing with Press Releases: Rise of social media has enforced changes in press release to social media release, as press release communicates only to journalists. Social media release incorporates social sharing buttons in press releases as journalists rely a lot on this feature. This feature also helps to build credibility as journalists have a wide following of readers on social networks. Social Media release also enables ease of dissemination of release since it follows the principle of shares, so is less spamming. As social media release is targeted to the online content generators, it is preferable to share only information rather than PR Jargons. Also Social Media Release incorporates all the elements of social media, SEO along with press release, offering all required information for the reader. SMR is beneficial to target bloggers, journalists, content marketers, etc. When creating a news release for print, catchy headline works to attract attention, but when writing for an online audience have to include the keywords and search terms that you want to be found for. 
• Build Campaign around Case Studies: Case study helps to build story for engagement with journalists in much easy way to explain about products / services, since explaining about products is quite boring. Creation of visual case study has better impact than textual. 
• Journalist access and insights: Social media has greatly helped PR professionals to source information and likes about journalists, this helps to build better relationships with journalists. Social Media has also given rise to citizen journalism, which emphasis importance of bloggers, authors, content generators, etc. Further, journalists often search for sources of information and social media is the first place they update about their requirements. 
• Sharing is caring:  To be successful on social media it is important to be helpful and offer information, whether related to your client or information from market. Providing information to journalists and fans helps in developing engaging relationships. Social media is more about working collaboratively. 
• Managing Reputation: Reputation management is about reaching out to fans and clients through social media, rather than depending on journalists as the turnaround time is more. Social media is viral, usually one social media day = 8 hours, so response time for crisis has to be immediate. Also with social media is much easier to respond to crisis, as offline media takes time to respond. To avoid such situation engage regularly rather than when NEEDED. Even though social media gives the option to engage online, any negativity should be taken offline as high chances of hitting viral. Provide clear instructions which are helpful, don’t confuse. If you don’t know then assign person having technical knowledge

Internet Marketing – The Next Big Thing in Board Room Meetings

Don’t be surprised if ‘Internet Marketing’ is the next agenda during your board meetings, with Narendra Modi and NDA winning the Elections 2014 this has become the NEXT BIG THING for discussion. Be it your board meeting, customer care dept. meeting or human resource meeting, everyone is discussing about it, so be equipped for it. 

Internet Marketing as defined by Wikipedia – Online advertising, also called Internet advertising, uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including banner advertising) and mobile advertising.  

Major reasons behind Internet Marketing being the HOTTEST topic of discussion is almost 90% hardly understand its implications whether positive or negative. Having account on Facebook and twitter deciphers into knowledge on Internet marketing, which by far most Indian’s believe?

 

So finally what is internet marketing, to make it simple here you go

Search Engine Optimization - This is a process to organically rank your website in top ten results in search engine. This process involves more than 200 techniques and each is used based on the search engine algorithms. To put it in simple words, using this technique, your website can rank in the top pages of search engine, which results to more clicks, more leads, more conversions and more BUSINESS.

Social Media Optimization – This is a process where in social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Blogger, Flickr, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc are used. SMO is more of a branding technique for the company. This technique is used to engage with the stakeholders, customers and leads. Though this is a long term process, but it definitely helps in the SEO process to generate instant leads.

 

Pay Per Click – This is a process where you pay to the search engine / social media portal to rank your website / updates on top of the results. Referred as PPC, since you have to pay per click, there are different combinations which can be used to garner the desired result. But since this is PAY PER CLICK, so incurs huge budgets.

For any company to succeed online a combination of these three techniques are used, but never forget to define the objective of the strategy, because without objective the whole budget and time will be wasted. So next time in the board meeting be well prepared to discuss how this will be a boon for different departments. Remember ‘Digital Marketing in Future will be like SEX, only losers will have to pay for it’

 

For better understanding check out my presentation on Slide Share - Click Here