The Public Relations Blog

A guide to the five types of media your company needs

Before diving head-first into the different types of media, it’s important to first dip your toes in the water and learn what media is. Media is a communication tool used to deliver information. The three types of media are commonly known as news media, social media, and web media, but you might also see them referred to as earned media, shared media, and owned media. 

Some other forms of modern media are print media, television, movies, and video games. 

Social media is a necessary tool to successful PR campaigns

Social media is about conversations, community, and connecting with your audience. It’s not just a broadcast channel or marketing tool. You need to be authentic and candid with your audience to make a connection. 

Social media is also known as shared media, which is user-generated content that can be shared on multiple platforms with friends, family, business associates, and buyers of your products and services. Social media users want to be informed, entertained, and connected with other users. To this end, you must customize each post so it is native to each platform. For example, you wouldn't post the same content on Instagram as you would on Facebook because the tone, audience, and demographics are different. 

Each social media platform should have uniquely tailored content

Understanding each social media platform’s purpose and its audience is vital if you want to produce content that is attractive and engaging to users. 

What if I told you that your company is doing social media all wrong? Stay with me.

To create content that attracts and engages your audience, you need to know and respect them. You can do this by understanding the platforms your audience uses to communicate. 

How earned media has changed, and what we have learned from it

Earned media is any material that has been written about you or your business that you haven’t paid for. It can be written off as “free publicity” for your company. Over the years, it has changed and is now presented through different media channels. Before, it used to be a 90-minute segment on a news channel, but now it can be seen as a 60-word tweet. 

Nonetheless, earned media can get confusing when it involves publicity. When you pay a news source to write a piece on your business, that is known as paid media. When you write an article for your website, that is known as owned media. 

Today, customers are heavily influenced by things they see on social media. Earned media plays a huge role in what is shared online, and we can learn a lot from it. 

Marketers should take note: Men are finally migrating to Pinterest.

Men are taking on the aesthetically pleasing world of Pinterest, and public relations and marketing professionals should take note.

Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information with images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos. This is done by scrolling through and saving pinboards.

Although women make up 60% of the app, male numbers have been on the rise since the beginning of quarantine in March 2020. 

As a public relations professional, it’s our job to stay up-to-date on the digital world. It is important to familiarize yourself with new trends and the tools and technology needed to succeed on social media. 

Currently, the most popular social media platform is Facebook with about 2.45 billion active users. Although Facebook may be at the top right now, anything could rapidly increase or decrease its popularity. For example, WhatsApp has seen a huge increase in downloads due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As Facebook removes gray badges, find out what urgent updates your marketing team must make

A feature that Facebook introduced almost five years ago is now gone from the social media platform. You could once identify verified business pages by their small gray check mark; however, as of October 29, 2019, that feature is no more. Why now? Don’t Facebook users want to know which companies are credible?

How to optimize networking opportunities with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social platform that helps people define themselves as professionals. Users create a personal profile that they can use to connect with other colleagues, associates, or professionals in their industry, area, and beyond. Hopefully you have an account set up already; if you don’t, you should.

Generate more leads on Instagram

Instagram is a social media phenomenon no digital marketer can ignore. With 1 billion active users, Instagram is a dynamic visual medium that is highly effective in attracting new leads and converting them into customers. Instagram’s popularity makes it a highly competitive environment too. Thousands of companies are competing for a split second of potential customers’ attention.

How to effectively use Facebook groups to grow your company

As you might know, Facebook changed its algorithm last year. The biggest social network in the world went back to serving its original purpose of connecting friends and family. Where does this change leave companies? Does it mean that your company should no longer include Facebook in its overall digital marketing strategy?