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How To Optimize Your Public Relations Effort for Social Media

July 8, 2010 10

Living an inspired life means I  see positive opportunities  under any circumstance. Combining my inspiration with my entrepreneurial mindset means that in any given  situation a light bulb will go off with a new idea for a blog post! (Even during Earthquakes). This public relations  blog post was inspired by my 3 minutes of television fame while modeling for My Fashion Plate on NBC a couple months ago. View my TV appearance clip here!

Marketing Melodie Models for MyFashionPlate

Being a Marketing professional I’ve always undestood how PR works hand in hand with marketing. PR is essentially the practice of managing the communication between your organization and the public to gain more exposure and target new audiences.  However, the days of submitting a traditional press release and hoping it gets picked up by a magazine writer or television station with significant lag time in publishing your news is over. PR has taken on a whole new spin with the embracement of social media.

While social media continues to experience exponential growth, there’s no doubt that having your company featured on TV or a news article published is still an exciting accomplishment. Thus while on TV for my FashionPlate I realized what a huge accomplishment it was for their company; definitely something that deserves recognition beyond 3 minutes. With Social Media, we can now optimize our PR appearances and turn them into a more personal marketing campaign. A successful PR program mixes traditional PR strategies with innovative social media practices so I’ve created a list of ideas on how to make your PR go social:

1. Teaser Posts: Create some excitement about your upcoming appearance. Whether it’s a mention in a magazine, a radio interview or television appearance, let your community know exactly when and where they can see your company in the media! Post anticipating tweets and Facebook updates a few days out. Ideally your posts will generate some retweets and shares thus making more people aware of your upcoming appearance.

2. Interactive Promotion: Turn your teaser posts into a fun promotion that encourages your community to not only share your PR news to their social networks but also reward them for actually viewing your PR appearance. This can be done through asking your community a question on Twitter where the answer can only be found through viewing your PR exposure. Those who reply with the correct answer can be rewarded with a prize.

3. Blog post follow up: After your PR appearance, draft up a quick blog post with information about your feature. If it’s a TV clip, see if you can obtain a file of the clip to host on your own YouTube and embed in your blog post.  If you don’t have rights to the clip, create a link to it. If it’s a radio appearance, see if you can get an audio of your airtime.  If it’s an article, link to the online version of the article.  Make sure to thank the media graciously for your appearance.

4. Social Media shoutouts– When thanking the media in you blog posts, Twitter updates and Facebook updates make sure to make connect back to everyone else’s social networks. This significantly increases the chances that your partners and the media outlets will repost your information. You’re recognizing others by their social media handles and everyone loves to be recognized. For example in the MyFashion Plate segment all the outfits were from Nordstrom. In a tweet I would make sure NBC and Nordstrom are both refered to by their Twitter name “All outfits featured on our @nbcsandiego segment are from @nordstrom“.

5. Media Section– Create a media section on your website that showcases all of your appearances. This is a great way to strengthen the credibility of your brand, show off your great media accomplishments and have a hub that visibly organizes everything. You can place links of all your Social Media press releases here too.  (See below).

6. Social Media Press Releases– When creating a press release, your social media version should be customized for the web. Social Media press releases have sharing features, a specific tweet that readers can post, links within the press release etc. PitchEngine is a useful site I’ve found that’s a Social Media Press Release Builder. Here is a good example of a Social Media Press Release for Playlistify created by Press Doc, another great resource to write, edit and publish your own social media release online and share it with journalists, bloggers and your clients. Notice how Playlistify’s Social Media press release has a visible Share button on the top right and links to resource on their own website plus partner websites.

So if my Marketing career doesn’t work out, it’s good to know I can fall back on my modeling career ;). Know examples of companies that do a great job with Public Relations on Social Media? Please share in the comments below.

*MyFashion Plate’s TV appearance was booked by their Public Relations company, RKPR a San Diego PR company that does an amazing job at connecting their clients to the media.

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10 comments Leave a comment

  1. Denise says...

    These are really great tips and takeaways to incorporate media relations and social media efforts. The only word of caution I would say is to be careful with the “teasers.” This is because your media contacts may (and usually are) monitoring your brand, and if you will be doing similar something for a competitor, they may cancel the second opportunity altogether. So it's vitally important to ensure that what you book is quite different for each outlet (especially for TV).

    • MarketingMelodie says...

      Thanks for the tip Denise! It's definitely a good idea to be cautious of anything you publish and post for your company!

  2. Just posted this on the PRSA SD facebook page – I'm a believer the PR and marketing are blending more and more as the lines in media blend.

    • MarketingMelodie says...

      I definitely agree. Public Relations is essentially what a lot of social media is creating! Thanks for the Facebook post, much appreciated!

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