Four Golden PR Rules in The Age of Social Media

Pr rules in the age of social media

Four Golden PR Rules in The Age of Social Media

With the immense popularity of social media, the traditional landscapes of public relations (PR) through newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals have completely changed, but there are still some golden PR rules that remain important for Social Media.

Gone are the days where PR professionals would subscribe to print publications to get the latest stories that they can use for their “newsjacking” strategy, or the practice of injecting your marketing ideas into recent news to generate more followers. Unlike radio and TV commercial spots, social media channels provide PR companies with cost-efficient means of publishing press releases and digital contents (audio, video, and creative visuals).

Many small businesses seem to be unaware of the wonders that social media marketing can do for them. Last year, UK telecom provider, O2, teamed up with Twitter UK to launch Social Insights, a tool that helps SMBs manage their social media presence with Twitter Advertising and updated relevance rankings (source: O2). But even the right tools are useless if you’re mismanaging your social network identity, or posting the wrong information, or not making the most out of social media.

Companies can leverage social media to post quick messages to their followers, perform quick brand management, and build an army of brand loyalists and advocates. However, one single wrong move and it can tarnish your online presence forever, so here are four golden social media PR rules that you should take into consideration.

 

Write ‘Tweetable’ Press Release Headlines

Social media has the power to instantly make you famous online and reach a wide array of people. Writing your PR headlines with “tweet-ability” in mind can help you gain more retweets. Below are some of the pointers for your social media press releases:

• Your title must be short and concise enough to fit into a status bar.
• Your press release preview must also accommodate a Twitter handle and a link to its full web article.
• Its preview (one or two sentences) should contain all the necessary W’s and H’s, since not all social media users are interested to read everything they see online.
• Your brand or company name should be placed before the title so it can easily be seen.
• Keyword is the key here. Think of the words and phrases that your intended audiences usually typed in Google’s search bar.

Be Careful With Your PR Jargon

Jargon will always be a part of your tweets, press releases, and digital campaigns. They make your statements more “catchy” and more appropriate to the kind of industry you are in. For PR Professionals, some of the widely used jargons are the bottom line, stakeholder, fast track, out of the loop, and best value. Although these terms are safe to use and easy to understand, if overused, they can be very annoying and confusing to a typical reader. Some jargon like reach out, ping, and touch base, can also be offensive when used out of context.

Wise Marketing on their Twitter page (@letsgetwise) shared a link from PR Moment about The Most Annoying Jargon Used in PR Today.” One of which is the use of the line ‘we can guarantee you 110 per cent.’ All of us know that it’s not realistic and using it is comparable to doing false marketing.

 

Build Personal Relationships

Even in the traditional PR landscapes, building personal relationships is crucial for the success of this endeavour. It doesn’t always mean that having an army of  journalists on your Facebook or Twitter page would give you the privilege of more shares and free press coverage. “Face-to-face relationships with media still bring the best results,” wroteJames Crawford, a PR veteran from the American Express Open Forum.

So, the next time you attend trade shows and press conferences, you need to interact and befriend as many press members as you can. But, make sure to do your research first prior to approaching them. You also need to figure out who among them are constantly covering the developments in the kind of industry that you are in. Don’t be shy to ask for their emails and social pages. In the event that you are not in any business to attend actual events, you can interact with them personally using the chat and messaging feature of your social media pages.

 

The 80-20 Rule

In creating PR content, you should follow this rule: 80% of your text should be informational and only 20% of it should be about sales.  Diane Thieke of Biznology believes that “the less you sell, the more you sell.” Following this tactic, even in your social media statuses will build more trust among your followers. Giving them informational content will make you appear as an expert in the field. Once you’ve instil the idea of trust, brand patronage will follow.

With these rules in mind, you can successfully implement your PR strategies in your business social pages. How do you use Facebook and Twitter on your marketing plan?

 

At Digital Marketing AOK we provide bespoke training for businesses and their staff on all of the above. That’s the beauty of having an agency working with you with a comprehensive business management and performance background that coupled with our training industry background means that you are placing your staff and your business in good hands we believe that the best social media solution with an agency involves us getting to know you your business and your key stakeholders as well as possible and working with you to create a cohesive end to end solution for your business.

 

For details and to have a chat, please contact us here, send an email, or give us a call on 1300 658 543.

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Simone Douglas

Simone Douglas

Simone is co-founder and Senior Principal Solutions Architect of Digital Marketing AOK. Simone offers over 17 years in corporate management roles encompassing generalist HR recruitment and development of small to large teams across multiple sites, industry sectors and states. Experienced in a variety of social media platforms and their complimentary applications, social media strategy, risk management, disaster recovery and associated HR policies and processes.