The Public Relations Blog

Create mutually beneficial relationships using social media

Already this month, our team has blogged about social media and its role within an overall marketing communications program. To that end, comments have come in inquiring about how businesses can establish stronger ties with the local media through social media.

If you use Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook regularly, you immediately gain access to a large and varied population of journalists and news media outlets. Even a quick review of local media websites highlights that most news professionals maintain social media presences – with Twitter handles (@name) stashed within team bios, beneath photos or in news blog posts. Of course, if you aren’t yet comfortable with Twitter as a social media platform, you’ll first want to brush up on basic functionality and terms including “retweet” (RT), “hashtag” (#), “favorite,” “newsfeed,” “tweet,” etc. before proceeding.

In our experience, if businesses or individuals truly want to establish relationships using Twitter, they’ll want to consider these best practice tips:

Use the Axia PR social media e-book to ensure you’re doing everything to reach consumers

Social media is not just for college students anymore; it is big business. Understanding best practices for this tool and how it can affect your bottom line may help you jump ahead of the competition.

Axia PR’s e-bookThe Essential Social Media Management Guide can show you how to best utilize social media for reputation management, search results rankings and customer engagement. Download it today to help with your social media efforts.

Embrace, understand and leverage this important tool

Everyone reading this post likely has a general understanding of social media. Regardless of the platform, social media is about one thing and one thing only: social engagement.

All businesses should seriously consider at least a minimal social media presence. Unlike traditional public relations, social media is focused on creating brilliant content, sharing it, then listening and responding in an effort to take traditional PR efforts to the next level. Using advanced reporting, monitoring and structuring tools, public relations teams can further build brands and create a loyal, active following of customers and fans – all of whom can further extend your reach.

Follow these tips to make your customers swoon

Contrary to popular opinion, delighted customers are not natural; they are created. With so much competition, it’s not enough to simply gratify your customers. You must find ways to enchant them and keep them coming back for more.

The sales cycle funnel includes the stages of attraction, conversion, closing the sale and delighting your customers. Many companies spend all their time on the first three stages and then stop, apparently believing that once a customer makes a purchase, he will always remain loyal. However, like any relationship, it has to be nurtured and cherished, and a PR firm can help you do that.

Don’t fear Googlebots and hashtags; use PR to help make the most of them

Just when you thought social media management couldn’t get any more complicated, up pops yet another potential fox in the henhouse. You’ve probably heard talk that Google and Twitter just renewed their relationship so that information shared in Tweets will appear in Google searches.

This news could either be a disaster for your company or another path to more profitability. It all depends on how well you’re able to manage these platforms, and the right PR firm can help ensure that your company handles it properly.

If your company doesn’t appear within the first two pages of Google search results, you could be in trouble. Even though it’s not usually considered part of the plan, strong corporate leadership could be an invaluable tool for your company’s success. Earn your customers’ trust to keep their business.

Let PR show you how to create a winning campaign for a special celebration

You may be aware that National Wear Red Day is celebrated on Feb. 6 this year. It’s a symbol of support and a way to bring attention to women’s heart health. While you may briefly wonder why so many of your employees are wearing red on Friday, it won’t really mean anything else for your company.

Or will it?

This day serves as a reminder that it is possible for you to create special recognition for your own company and a cause that you choose. With help from PR, you can learn how to do this and how it can be beneficial to your company.

Learn the difference and let PR show you how to control both for increased profits

Would you let your accountant or HR officer run amok with no oversight or direction from you? Of course not, but that’s exactly what many companies do when it comes to their online presences.

Some believe that as long as they have search engine optimization covered, they’re fine. They use the right targeted keywords numerous times and customers will be able to find them, so that’s it. However, how consumers find you is not as important as what they see when they do. It is vital to control the information about your company on the Internet. This is called online reputation management, and having professional PR help in this area is essential.

This underutilized PR asset could give you the boost you need.

Since most businesses are acutely attuned to fast-paced digital news derivatives and television, many don’t consider that a simple editorial calendar could lead to a magazine cover story. That’s where they’re mistaken.

Editorial calendars are a tool used predominantly by a print or digital publication’s advertising department to plan out significant features, focuses, or areas of interest throughout the year. Using that guide, advertising sales teams approach businesses about purchasing ad space, since most companies will advertise in issues that focus on a topic or feature critical to their primary demographics or industries.

Toward the end of every calendar year, publications begin to post their editorial calendars. Savvy public relations veterans use these tools to map the types of stories or businesses a publication plans to cover. They can then determine appropriate editions for which to pitch their clients.

Let PR demonstrate how to encourage repeat business and maintain brand loyalty

In business, we all understand the importance of continually bringing in new customers. However, sometimes we get so caught up in this task that we forget to nurture the customers we already have.

Just like any relationship, you can’t wow them once and then believe they’ll be yours forever. With so much competition, it’s too easy for your customers to go elsewhere. Therefore, you must constantly find ways to bring the sexy back, and a PR firm can help.