Tuesday, May 27, 2014

How to Use Social Media in Public Relations

In last Tuesday's post left you with an explanation of what social media is and in todays post I bring up the topic of how to use social media in public relations.  
- Being a social media enthusiast (on Twitter since May 2007 at @FernandSalasNY) and an unwilling participant in the recent NY Post Page 6 Chopard senior publicist vs NYC celebrity media photographers social media fail  news item written by Emily Smith, it is ever more evident that in 2014 and beyond, all industries dealing with news media entities really do need to utilize the worldwide communication aspect of social media correctly as technology evolves.. Used properly  as a communication tool it can  create amazing awareness of a cause and broadcast a strong positive message or NOT!
   Social media is changing the way consumers interact with brands. It should not exist independently of the company's goals and plans for growth; instead, it should be embedded as part of those goals and plans. It's not enough to broadcast your message anymore, you need to be able to establish trust, your place in their day to day lives. How does your brand help and improve your consumer's world? What ways can your business contribute? Answering these questions are the first steps towards working out how you can use social media to achieve them. There are more opportunities than ever to build your brand, more ways to connect with people. You just need to work out where they are, what they need and how you can be there for them. .The more you can, the more you work towards establishing your place in your consumer's world.
   By integrating the social media campaign into the overall company strategy, creating engaging content and measuring ROI, even big businesses can navigate social media effectively
  In the video below Kelly Brady publicist and owner of Brandsway Creative PR explains the use of social media when it comes to public relations.

Video by:  Howcast - How to Use Social Media in PR | Public Relations
* Speaker: - Kelly Brady - @KellyBrady on Twitter or Instagram: KellyBradyPR

* Video sidenote:: Ms. Brady includes Klout as a social media channel which it is not, it is a social media influence tracker. 
["Klout.com is a social media content discovery tool and status update scheduler website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the "Klout Score", which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measures the size of a user's social media network and correlates the content created to measure how other users interact with that content. Klout launched in 2008. - Wikipedia "]

  Facebook, Pinterest, and Foursquare as Kelly mentions indeed are all social media channels with an ongoing audience engagement from their respective internet community being the key aspect. Left out of the video, we can also include the social media sites: Google+, Soundcloud, Instagram, and Youtube to the ever growing list.