Living an inspired life means I  see positivity and opportunity  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!

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 outs day. 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 recognizes. 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.

Hello to my regular readers and new faces who are finding this from my TV segment! I promise I’ll be writing another blog soon that’s non Twitter related. It’s been such a hot topic recently that it’s impossible to avoid the hype! I was invited to be on Television tomorrow morning at 9am on CW6’s  San Diego Living to discuss Twitter and it’s opportunity in the dating scene. I’ll be appearing with local dating coach, DeAnna Lorraine. What excited me is yet another traditional media portal, television is recognizing and embracing new media.

Many people have been calling me a Twitter Expert. I don’t consider myself an expert and there are still negative associations with people who call themselves a Social Media Expert. I do however have a lot of experience on the social network. I have executed many social media campaigns utilizing Twitter and built up my own brand and online persona using Twitter but I still have so much to learn! Technology is changing by the minute. What may have worked yesterday could be history today so it’s important to always stays ahead of evolving technology to ensure you surpasse industry standards.

Dating is a big part of building relationships which is where the correlation with Social Media comes in. Social media campaigns focus on building relationships and community around a brand. Social media is used to establish connections and engage with your consumer. I’ll refrain from giving dating tips in this post (PHEW). You can turn to DeAnna for that but I do want to give a few simple tips in building customer relationships through Twitter.

1. Listen- Be an active listener on Twitter. Listen to what your community is saying. Listen to what your community wants.  Many of us have poor listening skills. Before we finish hearing what the other person is saying we stop listening and start to formulate our response. This prevents us from really understanding what the other person’s needs are. Before you start blasting out promotions, make sure it’s what your customers want.

2. Show You Care- Now that we’ve got our listening skills fine-tuned take action to show you really care about your community’s needs. Listening allows you to provide useful content and information that your followers want. Perhaps there were complaints about your product being too expensive? How about offering a discount to Twitter followers? Perhaps your followers had many suggestions. How about posting changes on Twitter your company made through customer suggestions?

3. Count On You- By listening and showing you care, your followers will begin to believe you’re a leader. Make sure you’re proactive in keeping this reputation. Be the first to post industry news and unique information. Be an authority and useful resource in your field. When a situation comes up where your service is needed your company will be top of mind because your followers already know they can count on you.

There you have it, three simple ways to build good customer relationships on Twitter. If you have any other tips, please leave them in the comments below. If you’d like to find out more how to enhance your customer relationships through Twitter and other Social Media networks please don’t hesitate to contact me.