Mentos and cola are pretty harmless on their own, but when combined, you better have your poncho ready. Social media and public relations are much like that dynamic duo … tasty when enjoyed alone, but when teamed up, they have explosive power to boost your marketing efforts for maximum interest, eyeballs, and actions taken.
Social Media All by Its Lonesome
Let’s consider the best-case scenario for social media marketing by itself. Your business has a decent social following made up of loyal employees and interested customers. You share new products, blog posts, and employee birthdays.
This is all great as a baseline for your business’s social media efforts, but does it ever feel kind of flat? Without the driving force of a public relations centerpiece, your social media may lack timeliness or urgency. After all, why do we follow businesses on social other than freebies or sales? A: Because we fear missing out on something before it’s gone.
Public Relations: A Solo Act
PR all alone is a similar story. Your team has strong relationships with local media and national editors. Your subject matter experts are great in front of the camera and bylined in articles. You host events that folks love to attend and your tradeshows result in tons of leads.
But, where do these interviews, articles, and event details live? How do you drive interest and nurture leads after events? Email marketing can be effective, and you can house content on your website, but you’re missing the sense of community and repeated interactions provided by social media.
Social Media and PR: Tactics Match-made in Heaven
There are countless ways to harness public relations and social media’s combined muscle, but here are a few cornerstone efforts to help illustrate how PR and social work together.
- Events: Share your event’s webpage and details on social, or even better, create a Facebook or LinkedIn-specific event page so that potential attendees can show interest, get updates, and see who else might be coming. Follow up the event with candid photos from the event, thank yous, and info about similar upcoming events as a way to maintain contact with these users.
- Pitching: Use social media to connect 1-to-1 with editors—like and share their posts to show you’re committed to a mutually-beneficial relationship. Use your social channels to share your subject matter expertise and brag about your in-house experts. Then, when you’re pitching, editors will already know you’re a power player with industry-leading knowledge.
- Articles: Now that your article has been published in a top industry publication, use your social media channels to amplify that piece. Share the article via quotes with custom graphics, and tag the author so people can put a face to the expertise. Make the most out of that article and share different types of social posts, because everyone has a preference when they’re consuming content (text vs. video, etc.)
Integrated Marketing Is Always Better Than Siloed Efforts
The moral of the story? Marketing tactics are always more powerful together than alone. That’s why we use strategy and research to find the right marketing mix of tactics for your business that achieves your goals and boosts your bottom line.
You can drop us a line, and, while you’re waiting (don’t worry, we’ll get back to you in a jiffy!), learn more about our public relations and social media services, as well as our successful past projects.
