It seems like as soon as you figure out how to use social media, it changes. So-called social media gurus are constantly bombarding you with the latest and greatest techniques for reaching more people with your message.
Ahem. May I add a few of my own?
I see too few companies really leveraging the connection between social media and PR. The two play so nicely together, and you should take advantage of this fact.
Here’s what I’m seeing work for brands, and how you can use these trends to grow your reach as well.
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1. Letting Your Fans Share Your News
News is no longer solely your brand’s responsibility to disseminate. Sure, you do your part, but so do your customers and followers now. Social media has made that a reality.
Just look at AT&T’s recent announcement to acquire DirecTV. The Twitterverse went crazy. All the articles written on CNN, FOX Business and dozens of national and local publications were spread far and wide through the power of social.
This is even a good strategy for getting more coverage. If a journalist sees lots of activity around your news on social, it may be a more appealing story for him to cover for his publication.
How You Can Use It: Encourage your customers and fans to share your news. When you publish a release, share it in your email newsletter, on your blog, on your website and through all social channels. Encourage your audience to spread the word. If they love you, they will.
2. It’s Not (Just) About Getting in Print
In the past, you’d amplify a press release to the proper channels (tv, radio, print). You had a greater chance of getting coverage in a local publication than you probably do today, simply because more people are trying to pump out news.
But let me be completely honest with you: print doesn’t have the same impact it once did. After all, people can’t click the name of your company to go to your website. While getting on news and industry websites is a major goal, it’s not the only way to PR success.
Blogs, for one, are a huge trending target for your news. Bloggers want to talk about exciting things in your industry. If you’ve got news, it’s worth building relationships with key bloggers to get it there.
How You Can Use It: Including bloggers who focus on your industry in your PR pitch. Get to know them first by reading their content and commenting on it. Also follow them on social.
3. Analytics: Your Secret Weapon
If you’re not measuring your PR efforts, both through publishing your press release and in sharing it socially, you’re missing a huge opportunity to really understand how it’s working for you.
You’ve got several tools at your disposal, including the reports you get from your press release distributor.
Below I’ve shared part of a report from a recent release I issued. The entire thing is much more in depth, and shows where people live that clicked on it, and how many people clicked links within the release. Here we see how many impressions the release received.
To me, this is a good indicator of how on-target my press release topic is.
Using Google Analytics, you can also see how many people clicked from your press release (on all the sites it was published on) to your website. Again, this can tell you if what you’re publishing is interesting to your audience. For those dud releases that didn’t do a good job of directing traffic to you, you can toss those topics in favor of subjects your audience really responds to.
How You Can Use It: Every time you issue a release, track traffic. It’s as simple as that.
These are all trends that benefit you, as they draw more followers and traffic to your website.
Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Communications, where she helps her clients realize the benefits of social media, content marketing and blogging.
Image: Jason Howie (Creative Commons)
