Maximizing PR and Social Media

Social media has taken the world of marketing and public relations by storm, providing more channels and new ways to connect and interact with an audience. Companies are devoting an extensive amount of time and resources towards big returns on PR and social media in today’s uber, no pun intended, competitive world. Are you maximizing your return on this investment?

To gain the best results and see a nice return on your PR and social media campaigns, there are a few things you can do to help boost your ROI.

First, be brief, enough said. Second, be of interest. Your tweets, blogs and posts need to have some value and interest, so make sure they are actually interesting and newsworthy. Third, know your target audience and make sure each post is of interest to them. Next, be quick to respond to any comments, replies, shares, or other interaction. The more interactive the better, so be as fast to respond and interact as you are to create posts.

It also helps to research the key influencers in each market/industry and determine which social media platform they are using. Take the time to find out who are these influencers in social media; the person(s) writing and posting the most about your industry or product/service type, who has the most daily/weekly tweets, and who has the largest number of followers. These are influencers that you want to interact with and prioritize accordingly.

Some other great tools to use are images, photos and videos, which add a visual element and some pizazz to make your blogs and posts stand out. The goal is to be more memorable than the hundreds of other things your target audience sees online in a day. For many products, the visuals you offer can have serious impact. As we all know, people are visually oriented so take advantage of this useful option.

Finally, don’t forget to use these valuable sites and services on a regular basis. Posting tweets and blogs is great, but not if you only do it once a month or twice a year. Social media is a very active and interactive medium that needs to be utilized on a daily/weekly basis to establish, build and maintain your social media presence and reputation.

Measure wherever you can. After all you can't confirm progress if you don't know where you have started. This is a big topic that deserves a whole post(s) by itself. We will cover tracking and metrics in detail in the future.

The bottom line is that social media transended the fad stage and has become an important part of the game in today’s world, business and personal. Your brand and/or product can have a great and positive impact if used regularly and used properly.

In the future Truman Prewitt will talk more about working with influencers to get the most out of relationships with the least amount of time and hassle. We will talk about a new product BrandPlug and PR HealthScore.