Social media is a green field for PR pros. Virtually every person you want to market to spends time online engaging with a social media platform. The catch is you must stand out. In a world where everyone wants just a minute of your time, asking for the mere seconds it takes to read and like a post is a tall order.
The nonprofit association CompTIA faced this challenge. To get results it failed to attain previously, the association had to do things it hadn’t done before. By going back to journalism basics it rebooted its approach to social media, and increased engagement by as much as 180%. Thinking like a journalist will not only help you achieve your goals, it will make you indispensable as this niche grows in professional relevance.
At the heart of social media is communicating quickly and clearly. The challenges you face in crafting the perfect update are similar to what a reporter working on an article must overcome. You have to distill the facts for your audience and remove extraneous material. The more work you leave for readers to do, the more likely it is they will opt out and skip your messaging altogether.
Traditional journalists operate by a series of rules to make their stories clear and succinct.First, before crafting a story or update, savvy reporters will consider the audience. Who is it that we’re writing for? Depending on your audience, your venue, tone and composition will change. Knowing how your audience wants to receive a message is crucial to reaching it. Look at your analytics for clues, whether it’s the onboard insights from Facebook, the analytics tab on Twitter or software like Iconosquare for Instagram. Where your audience resides will dictate how you address it.
Journalists use another rule of storytelling: “Show, don’t tell.” If a picture is worth a thousand words, then use one! Don’t waste your words where an image tells the story better. Using facts and figures is a great place to brainstorm a way to tell the story visually. One of CompTIA’s biggest bumps in engagement and reach came from looking at ways to visualize research studies. By going from text-only Facebook posts to a graphics-first approach, it increased reach on these weekly posts by as much as 671%. This significant increase provided greater exposure to the people it wanted to connect with week after week.
The third, and perhaps most important, journalistic idea to think about is avoiding wasted words. To borrow from Shakespeare: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Journalism schools used to teach that the first paragraph should capture the audience in fewer than 32 words. Today, the word count varies based on where your message will be delivered. Regardless of if you’re crafting a tweet or a LinkedIn company page update, the more concise, the more eyeballs you will earn and keep.
To that end, reporters are tasked with eliminating jargon and acronyms. If readers need a dictionary to understand your post, they will simply scroll on. Journalists are taught to spell out most acronyms on first reference, which is a rule to adhere to in social media. Unless the shortened version is part of your organization’s online identity, you should spell out these items in tweets and updates. Better yet, explain them as you would to someone who is unfamiliar with the material.
A fourth characteristic of a successful journalist that lends itself to the world of social media is having a knack for being timely. The reporter who finds a way to provide a local angle on national news or can scoop the competition with a breaking update is the most valuable name on the masthead that day.
Look for ways to creatively align your PR goals with current events and holidays to take advantage of trends. For example, CompTIA regularly monitors trending tech memes and seeks ways to add spin to it, such as the Charmander or Be Like Bill memes. It looks for quirky holidays that matter to its audience, such as Talk Like a Pirate Day or World Nutella Day. While these may appear to be fun gags, they serve the greater purpose of engaging followers in a timely way, highlighting CompTIA’s relevance in the marketplace and ability to react quickly. A great place to find these holidays is through Encore’s Weekly Sidekick, which sends email about upcoming holidays, premieres, birthdays and dates in history.
Editors tell reporters they must circulate to percolate. This means understanding what stories to tell. Quality journalism that engages, incites and intrigues often is the result of working your beat daily. Instead of leveraging old-school phone calls and shoe leather, social media writers must keep an ear to the digital ground through online listening.
People share huge windows of their lives online. It’s up to you to intelligently eavesdrop to make the most of these insights. Follow your influencers on Twitter. Set up Google news alerts for your company name, leadership and hot-button issues. Take your Facebook reviews and page comments to heart. And respond! You should spend 50% of your time online engaging with your audience—asking for feedback, answering questions, thanking people for their insights and congratulating followers for their assorted accomplishments. In embracing the social aspect of social media, you ingratiate yourself to the audience, and ingrain your message into its online experience.
Social media is a complicated beast to contend with, yet winning the game of online engagement can be done using basic journalism rules: Listen, simplify and publish wisely. Stop your audience mid-scroll by looking for ways to visually impress your readers. The shorter and more streamlined your messages are, the more likely they are to get read, liked and shared. Never miss an opportunity to join a conversation through the thoughtful use of relevant memes and holidays. And be proactive. The more you interact with the world, the more you will understand it.
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4 Questions to Ask About Your Social Messages
- Who is this message for? Understand your audience and where it resides online to get an idea of what the post will look like.
- What kind of image will make this pop? If possible, every post should have a graphic, whether it’s a photo from an event, a graph illustrating data or a logo for your brand.
- How short does the post need to be? Your venue will dictate how brief you need to be.
- How soon does this need to happen? Social media has a short half-life and an even shorter memory. If there is a time element to your update, time is of the essence.