Using PR is incredibly important for your business’ growth. It gives your business the opportunity to grow, expand, get further exposure and primarily just garner a positive relationship with its target audience.
One of the most important aspects of your PR strategy is through the use of social media. Social media is the driving force of today’s society. So why not utilise it?
Here are five reasons social media is important to your PR strategy.
Low cost
PR doesn’t have to be costly. Social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram all involve little to no cost. This allows you to save and reduce costs that may be spent elsewhere i.e. advertising, PR companies. There is also an option for you to pay for sponsored posts on each of the platforms, which in comparison to bigger advertising campaigns is still relatively much cheaper in cost.
Media lists
A large benefit of using social media is that you are able to keep an eye on relevant bloggers, journalists and companies in the media and thus easily compile a media list. This can be through many different ways, but the easiest is the Twitter ‘lists’ feature which allows you to create private or publicise your media lists. Gathering a list of people and finding out what they write and specialise in, is a great way for you to prepare for when you pitch to them.
Industry news
Keeping an eye on news in your industry sector is incredibly important for your business. Your business needs to be able to respond to news and events and in doing so keep relevant to consumers. The easiest way to do this is through social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, where you can easily find news on your industry; whether that be an event, company information or even a new product unveiling.
Audience interaction
The most important thing when considering your PR strategy is that your target audience needs to have a good relationship with the business. Living in a contemporary society, it’s very apparent that audience members are a lot more active in receiving news and getting their views out. Social media allows you to interact with a mass audience, whether that’s by sending out posts or by replying back to individuals. It’s also a great, easy and incredibly quick way to share news/ announcements with your audience and get instant feedback.
Editorial requests
Twitter has the brilliant #journorequest which allows you to directly respond to journalist and influencer’s article requests. This also gives you the opportunity to interact and build relationships in a more relaxed and informal way. These usually involve article, TV or radio requests for businesses and experts in a certain field i.e. fintech experts. Requests are sent out every day, so you need to make sure you’re keeping an eye out for relevant editorial requests.
If you’re struggling to have the time to filter through and find relevant requests to respond to, then you can always sign up to PR platforms that can do this for you. Paying for PR can be costly, but platforms like JournoLink can do this affordably as well as easily give you the power to showcase your press releases for bloggers, influencers and journalists to see.
PR is extremely important for any business to do and there’s many different ways that your business can do PR. Social media however is probably the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to do PR – as explained in the five top reasons above!
Further reading on social media
