Social media is a set of online tools that gives organizations a two-way channel of communication between them and their stakeholders. These same tools connect stakeholders with each other and gives them the ability to share information about an organization with groups. Additionally, social media allows people inside and outside an organization to create blog posts, short 140-character messages, photos, videos, and audio files. All of this content can strengthen brand equity and build community between stakeholders and an organization, or it can damage its image.
Communicating with stakeholders using these new online tools adds a new dimension to the public relations mix. In addition to media outreach, organizations have the capacity to quickly spread messages. With its speed, immediacy potential reach, social media should be engaged with intentionality and the strategic purpose of building community around a brand.
To make social media successful within the framework of public relations, the approach must be one of developing relationships with stakeholders through appreciation, affirmation, and acceptance. And the management of social media should be solely under the direction and leadership of a trained public relations professional.
Broad Social Media Strategies and Benefits
While strategy development for each organization will be different for each need, there for five broad approaches to social media engagements:
- Listening: This strategic approach is passive and its intention is to monitor conversations online that occur around a brand.
- Talking: This is a more active strategic approach that involves blogging. With this approach the organization creates content for a select audience, but does little to no engagement.
- Energizing: More complex than listening and talking, this approach strategically builds excitement among stakeholders of a brand and encourages them to share information.
- Embracing: Even more complex than the first three, this approach brings what has been coined “brand evangelists” into the fold and gives the special license to deepen relationships with a community that has been established around a brand.
- Supporting: The most complex of all, this approach incorporates all of the above with an added element of community support. At this stage, a sustainable ecosystem of stakeholders has been created around a brand.
Given these broad strategic approaches to social media, there are two very important questions to answer before any integration of social media into a public relations campaign occurs.
- Why does it make sense to deploy a social media strategy now?
- What should social media do for your company or institution?
After these questions are answered, then and only then should you move forward with a social media initiative. When you do move forward, according to resent reports by Social Media Examiner, these are but a few of the benefits:
- Generate more exposure for your company.
- Increase traffic to your website.
- Improve search ranking.
- Create new business partnerships.
- Generate more qualified leads.
- Reduce overall marketing expense.
- Improve sales.
Social media tools are here to stay. Studies show more and more people are accepting social media and find more trust in them than traditional media. Why wait? Contact me today.
