How to Implement Social Media into a PR Strategy
With so many people relying on social media for their news and daily entertainment, this form of new media is becoming more and more important for social media campaigns. In fact, it’s so important that it’s the S of the PESO model created by PR expert Gini Dietrich.
Social media has tons of advantages that, when combined with PR, can expose the right people to your organization and significantly accelerate growth.
Putting your content on social media can help you increase brand awareness and attract the right clients through unique and interesting ways of engagement. This engagement is key to making people feel like they are stakeholders in your success. . PR pros ignore social media at their own peril! But how do I start?
Decide what you want
The first thing you need to do when coming up with a social media strategy is to decide what you want out of it. Whether it's increasing brand awareness, managing reputation, or driving conversions, establishing specific goals helps you create a roadmap for how to strategize your social media PR activities. These can then serve as benchmarks for success to guide decision-making throughout your campaigns.
Who is the campaign aimed at?
Secondly, determine who your campaign is aimed at. Are you looking to increase sales? Are you looking to woo potential investors? Are you trying to drive charitable donations or raise awareness for a cause? Or are you just trying to make a huge splash and become a household name? By understanding your target audience, you’ll be able to determine what kind of PR messaging will have the most impact as well as which will gain the most traction on social media.
Choosing the right platform
After you’ve settled on who your campaign is going to be aimed at, now you need to find where they are on social media! Different platforms cater to diverse demographics and types of content, so choose the platforms where your audience is most active. Whether it's LinkedIn for more professional campaigns, Instagram for visual storytelling, or TikTok for Gen Z, aligning your platform with your audience's preferences will maximize the impact of your social media PR efforts. After all, what’s the point of posting if your target audience isn’t even there!
Using an influencer
One of the things to consider is whether you’re going to be using an influencer to help spread your message. Influencers are great at driving growth because, just like with legacy media, they’re an unbiased third party who’s word can be trusted by their followers. A great way to find the right influencer for your campaign is , by using a media database, such as Propel!. These databases provide access to comprehensive profiles of journalists, influencers, and media outlets, and can tell you exactly what their interests, coverage areas, and preferred way of getting in touch are. By using this data, PR pros can better tailor their outreach strategies and find the right influencers for their campaigns.
Engage engage engage!
Finally, authentic engagement and community building is key to building trust and loyalty on social media. An easy way to do this is by using a Public Relations Management (PRM) platform, such as Propel!By centralizing campaign information such as what messaging is on which social media platform,, which team member interacted with who and on which platform, , and understanding who on the team has the best relationship with which influencer, it’s easy to run a well organized and effective campaign. It’s also a great way to divide up tasks. For instance, determining who has the responsibility for engaging with commenters on a certain platform, and keeping a record of all the engagement in one central location. A PRM is a great way to organize and create meaningful interactions and genuine connections to strengthen an organization’s online presence, amplify messaging, and achieve PR objectives effectively.
