The Public Relations Blog

Benefits may not outweigh outsourcing social media

Your marketing and communications department may rely on various public relations companies. PR agencies provide businesses with critical social media support, creativity and connections. However, social media, when managed or co-managed internally, may offer many additional benefits.

Let PR show you how to use this vital tool successfully

Have you noticed how some companies seem to be masters at social media while others are still floundering, sputtering and completely lost? With so much riding on social media success, you want to make sure that your company is one of the former.

Learn how you compare with others in your industry and how to improve social media ROI

Are your social media efforts working for you? Sure, you have a presence on all the relevant social media platforms and you receive periodic feedback from customers, but do any of these things increase your market share or improve your brand? How can you find out?

Let’s face it. Social media is a waste of time unless it helps you achieve measurable results. This includes knowing if you are gaining leads and how your efforts stack up against the competition. Now there is a resource that can help.

Photographs are key in achieving viral success

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or perhaps today, pictures are worth hundreds of shares, thousands of retweets and a million likes.

In the last few weeks, several New York businesses have earned social media stardom simply because someone was smart enough to photograph their products and post them on Instagram. Black Tap Craft Burgers and Beer, The Bagel Store (Brooklyn) and Eggloo have all received major viral push across just about every social media platform due to their unique – and beautifully photogenic – consumables.

Many professionals today remain stumped by social media and the various platforms, each with their own unique rules and nuances. Often, businesses tend to use social media as a one-trick pony – and only as an additional sales tool. Public relations practitioners, however, understand that social media represents limitless possibilities to extend two-way communication. Social media is, at its core, an environment for engaging dialogue – with all its humor, frustration and inquisition included.  

Avoid these missteps to use Twitter to its full advantage

You’ve consulted with experts and dedicated a staff member to handle social media. The company Facebook page looks phenomenal and your LinkedIn articles get viewed and shared periodically. You post to Twitter also, but are you sure you’re doing it correctly?

Some social media sites, like Google+, are easily adaptable for businesses. Others, like Twitter, can be more complicated, and it’s easy for companies to make reputation-crushing mistakes. Learn the right (and wrong) ways to use Twitter for brand recognition and consumer engagement.

Live tweeting and posting aren’t for the faint of heart

Managing your company’s social media accounts can be a rewarding experience. If you don’t have a team available within your company to develop and promote content, hiring a public relations firm is a reliable solution to ensure you’re using quality content and providing active engagement to reach your customers. In some instances though, it isn’t just recommended that you use a PR firm; it’s critical.

Avoid these issues and keep your company off this list

Nobody’s perfect. We’ve all made mistakes we’d like to forget. Still, some companies make goofs that will live in infamy, especially when it comes to social media.

The very nature of social media means missteps become memorable and fails quickly go viral. With the ability to connect with millions of consumers and spread your company’s messages worldwide comes the possibility for gaffes on a global scale. Here are a few of our favorites.

From the strategic plan to measuring success

If you are fighting to get a green light on your social media strategy or looking to request more resources for social media, you’ll need upper management on board. To do this, you’ll have to prove that social media is a worthwhile investment for the company. Here are three ways you can sell social media to upper management.

A PR professional knows how to respond to the good, the bad and the ugly on social media

Most people have experience with social media through their personal pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. Some even gain large followings and feel that they are quite knowledgeable about social media. However, a company’s official social media accounts are much different than personal profiles. They require a specialized content strategy with professionally crafted posts.