It's no coincidence that PR agencies have social media teams with whom they work incredibly closely to maximise brand awareness for their clients and leverage the strengths of both disciplines. The power and growth of social platforms in the last 10 years has made it impossible not to integrate PR and social media, with media outlets now having dedicated social teams working with PR agencies to disseminate news specifically for the various social platforms. The live community management aspect of social media also plays a very important role within crisis management and protecting a brand, but how can brands successfully achieve this synergy, and what are the benefits in doing so?
What are the benefits of combining PR with social media?
Sharing content
This is not simply distributing or repurposing your news across multiple platforms, but giving a brand the ability to reach greater geographical media without additional cost and being able to reach different types of audiences at the same time. Through building a well-thought-out multi-channel communication strategy, you can create content that isn’t simply a cut and paste, but compelling narratives that are fit for purpose, and the associated audience. For example, creating infographics from research data or converting quotes from a press release into easily digestible social media content. Your press releases can be transformed into tweet threads as well as developing blog posts from media coverage and relevant industry talking points.
Staying relevant
Social media really comes into its own to aid proactive PR. By providing great market intelligence through social listening tools, brands can identify trends and respond quickly to industry developments. This not only enables a brand to gain a greater share of voice, but enhances the brand’s positioning by being on the pulse. Keeping your content relevant by understanding your audience and what they’re talking about is crucial, and simple, detailed personas of your audience, their interests and behaviours will enable you to drill down into targeting your content and messages specifically for who you want to see them.
Effective reputation management
Another benefit of combining PR with social media is reputation management. The power of social media and the importance of community management is never more successfully demonstrated than during a crisis. The ability to respond rapidly and ensure all stakeholders are kept informed of any developments means you can monitor reactionary sentiment, correct any misinformation quickly, and uphold the brand’s reputation during the crisis.
Social media also provides platforms for live coverage of events and announcements (positively as well as in a crisis), monitoring immediate feedback on what’s been shared, which further builds trust with a brand’s stakeholders and the public. Consistent messaging can also be ensured across all platforms (due to the advantage of direct communication with audiences), without the concern that your messages are being diluted by the media. In fact, by combining the two, you are amplifying your brand messages with PR and social media efforts.
Better relationship building
Before social media and advanced software tools, it would fall to events, conferences and press calls for PRs to meet the right journalists and begin to build relationships through using landline telephones. Social media has opened a world of easy access to journalists and influencers, providing the ability to build relationships quickly through regular, on-demand communication. Getting to know journalists on a more personal level can help provide more visibility for brands in general, and similarly, journalists often need input from industry experts, so those relationships can come into their own if PRs and social media teams have been actively building connections.
Boost individual profiles for expert positioning
Social media platforms, particularly those that allow for longer form content such as LinkedIn, provide the opportunity for senior management to build a personal profile that can further boost and complement a PR strategy. The reasons being it provides a face for the brand, builds trust and positions those individuals as experts in their fields (as well as putting them in front of journalists and media for expert comments). In addition, there’s also the option to integrate Instagram/Facebook ‘live’ videos to dig deeper into the faces behind the brands, and further build a community feel among customers and the public.
Making events work harder
Events and speaking opportunities are part of the usual PR mix, however, the amplification that social media can bring is incredible. Some of the best practices for amplifying your messaging using PR and social media are:
Live tweeting during PR events
Behind the scenes content on Instagram stories and reels
Hosting Facebook live Q&A sessions or live broadcasting events on your Facebook page
YouTube interviews and webinar expert panels.
All these aspects help to bring your events to life, allowing immediate engagement from your audience. It also brings them closer if they can’t physically be at the event, and crucially demonstrates you want them to be a part of your activity.
Data driven strategies to improve ROI
Monitoring software is constantly evolving and developing to provide the best insights for both social and PR measurement. Having the ability to track your reach, engagement and sentiment in real-time, teamed with gaining a better understanding of audience demographics will provide brands with detailed metrics on content performance. These insights are imperative when it comes to creating a cohesive communication strategy across PR and social media.
Post-project analysis, improvements and wash-ups result in truly informed approaches to solidify decisions and ultimately easily decipher what worked and what didn’t. Social media can also aid ROI without the need for paid media, providing lower distribution costs and generally a more efficient use of marketing budgets to build brands organically.
Measurement for impact
We’ve talked about data driving our strategies and detailed metrics to view performance, but how do those stack up against KPIs? Whilst PR reporting will include brand mentions, sentiment, coverage, share of voice and stronger media relationships, integrating social media will allow you to reach new depths, exploring metrics such as message penetration, leads, conversion rates and engagement levels, plus what content drove the most website traffic and from which channels. This post-match analysis enables KPIs to be revisited and reworked, setting new objectives to aim for.
If you’d like to explore how an experienced marketing agency could help you develop a multi-channel comms strategy to amplify your brand through PR and social media, get in touch with us today.