Real Time PR™: Score a Hole in One with Social Media
Real Time PR™ (also known as social media) can be an essential component of your PR strategy depending on your company goals and culture. While a marketing campaign may take months to implement, you can engage in social media immediately. Social media helps you connect with members of your industry, customers, news outlets and other people interested in what you and your company are doing.
The key to a successful social media strategy is consistent engagement. You should post often. These posts can be a mixture of business-relevant posts (tips for your industry, retweets of interesting articles, etc.) and “fun” posts that highlight your company personality (pictures from a recent company celebration, a tribute to a unique holiday, etc.). The key is engaging in conversations through these posts.
Large corporations have the means to hire people specifically for social media engagement, but for those of us in small business, engaging in Real Time PR is difficult because it often takes a back seat to servicing our customers. To help you easily move to the front seat, we’ve created 3 tips to maximize the reach of your posts while minimizing the time you need to spend on social media.
1) Post during high traffic times. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites all have specific times during the day that they have a lot of traffic. Post during these times to ensure people see what your saying!
2) Set aside time each week to monitor your social media platforms. Allow yourself half an hour each morning or an hour around lunch to sit down and engage with the rest of the Twittersphere.
3) Schedule your posts. Many blog sites and social network management platforms, such as HootSuite, allow you to schedule your posts for a certain time or day. During your morning social media session, create a few relevant posts and schedule them during high traffic times.
Engaging in Real Time PR™ is essential to a successful PR strategy. This can be time consuming but with proper time management and the right tools you can participate without sacrificing too much of your time.
Many social media management tools have been created to help you monitor your Real Time PR, use these to make your social media interactions as effective as possible.
Published on: July 1, 2013