If you weren’t at the PR News Social Media Summit last week, I forgive you. But really, you should try to attend an upcoming conference of ours because you are going to pick up a lot of unique, sound and creative tactics and strategies – what we like to call “stealable ideas” – that will move your PR and marketing efforts forward more than a notch. I must confess that I am engaging in shameless content marketing as I write this blog post. I get very excited after one of our PR News events and want to share some (not all!) of the gleanings from the day’s event. So herewith I present 9 really smart social media tips to get your week off to a #greatstart. These are made possible by our outstanding summit speakers, attendees and sponsoring partners.
- Best quote of the conference: "No one wants to be friends with a butter cracker." Kathryn Sheaffer, brand manager for Ritz Crackers, so aptly summed up the challenge of Facebook communications for brands. Be realistic about your brand's presence on social media and engage with your fans in realistic ways.
- Get a few social platforms rights, then start to take chances on others. In other words, don’t dive into the entire social media pool. Pick a few lanes to swim in first, be it Twitter and Pinterest, or Linkedin and Facebook, master your strokes there, then start exploring other waters.
- Take your press release off cruise control. First of all, the press release is not dead. But the old-fashioned press release should be put out to pasture. Make sure your releases are optimized for search, have multimedia components that drive stakeholder engagement, are written well and most of all, are interesting!
- Tweet short: A tweet that’s less than 100 characters lifts share rate by 17%. You thought 140 characters was short? Think again.
- During a crisis, Twitter is for news and Facebook is for hugs. Don’t mix it up.
- Great question posed to the audience: Why don’t PR pros do more A/B testing with their campaigns? Smart advice from Brandon Andersen of Cision, noting that A/B testing goes to the heart of Marketing 101 yet the PR discipline often overlooks this smart exercise in testing your messaging, be it on social media or in a traditional PR campaign.
- You cannot automate judgment. With all the talk of data mining, programmatic and cloud-based communication, the truth is that people still drive decisions. Make sure you put a premium on good judgment when hiring talent and executing on campaigns.
- Content marketing is a commitment not a campaign. Most brands are engaging in some type of brand journalism and the jury’s out on how well it’s working. Those committed to content marketing, weaving it into their marketing-PR matrix rather than a one-off campaign here and there, are most likely to succeed in this area.
- Visuals are the new headlines. A picture is worth a lot more than 1,000 words. Invest in video, infographics, photography and graphics. Take time to learn about Vine and Instagram. See what your audience is seeing and then give them some of that.
I hope you'll heed a few of these tips and let me know how it goes for you. Also feel free to add a kernel of advice below.
-- Diane Schwartz
Let's connect on Twitter: @dianeschwartz