Mastering Social Media PR: Your Ultimate Guide

With the rise of social media today, PR campaigns have taken a new face. Companies are logging into various social platforms to engage with their audience and broaden their reach.

Social media PR lets brands share news, developments, and more with their audiences in real time.

In this article, you’ll learn what social media PR is, how social media has transformed public relations, and seven tips when using social PR. I’ll also share two interesting examples of reputable brands using social media in their PR campaigns.

What does PR really mean in social media?

PR in social media means managing a brand's image, reputation, and communication on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It involves creating content, handling crises, and engaging with the audience to build positive relationships. The goal is to shape public perception, foster trust, and maintain a positive brand image in the digital space.

With social media marketing and PR, you get to paint the ideal picture of your brand in the minds of your target audience. It’s a quick way to tell your brand story and reach your audience on the social platforms they love. 

Think about this. You no longer have to wait for the media to write your story. With social media PR, you can write your story and reach your target audience in an instant.

How has social media transformed PR?

There are several ways social media has transformed the public relations landscape. Let’s discuss three main ones.

Influencing

Any reputable company offering PR services will rally behind influencer-driven public relations today. This is because user-generated content and influencer collaborations provide authentic endorsements. Influencers help you communicate key brand messages to your audience. They add weight to the message and help boost audience uptake. 

Social media has allowed ordinary people to become vloggers, bloggers, and industry experts. These influencers can reach specific audiences in a way that a brand could not have reached on its own. 

Remember to look past the influencer’s follower count when choosing the ideal influencer for your brand. Instead, look into their potential contribution to your overall PR goals. 

Communication

Social media has fundamentally transformed PR by democratizing communication and expanding its reach. It allows direct access to global audiences without traditional barriers. 

Additionally, brands can engage in real-time conversations, connect with their audience on a personal level, and gather immediate feedback. 

Most importantly, social media has shifted PR from one-way communication to an interactive dialogue, revolutionizing how brands manage their reputation and connect with their audience. 

Through social media PR, you can also use various types of social media posts to create a brand personality that resonates with your audience. Facebook Stories, Instagram Reels, Tweets, and other general posts are some of the types of posts brands use today for interactive engagements. 

24/7 Cycle

Aligning social media and PR helps brands keep their customers aware of the latest company news and trends. You can respond promptly to crises through social media. This allows you to nip the problem in the bud before it spreads like wildfire.

Social media data analytics tools enable precise measurement of PR efforts, facilitating data-driven strategies. Each social media platform has analytics tools to measure campaign success. 

You can also use third-party tools like quintly that deliver refined data on your social media activities. Use these tools to view how your social media PR efforts contribute to your overall PR goals.

7 tips when using social media for PR

You can use social media PR to boost your public relations efforts and achieve your PR goals. Follow these four tips to ensure your campaign is effective:

1. Set clear objectives

When using social media for PR, you need to set clear objectives for your campaign. When you know your objectives from the get-go, you can craft effective strategies that can help you meet those objectives in the first place. Also, you can set metrics that will help you determine whether you met those objectives or not at the end of the campaign. The result? You can tweak your strategies and ensure the effectiveness of future campaigns.

Assume your objective is to increase brand awareness. From that objective, you might decide to launch a UGC campaign as part of your social media PR strategy. So, your metric could be the Y number of designated campaign hashtags used by social media users. If the hashtags are beyond the number of designated campaign hashtags you set in the beginning, then you can conclude your social media PR campaign succeeded. If they didn’t meet your set number, then you can tweak your UGC campaign to ensure it yields better results in the future. 

Other social media PR objectives and their corresponding metrics include:

• To increase engagement - engagement rate
• To boost brand reputation - positive social media mentions
• To drive traffic to your site - website traffic

You can have more than one objective and one metric for each campaign. Just remember that the more specific your goals and metrics are, the better. 

2. Identify your target audience and choose the right platform

You can’t just launch a social media PR campaign without knowing your target audience. Knowing your target audience from the start will help ensure your social media PR campaign is effective. It can help you craft the tactics and messaging that will get them to take your desired action in the first place. 

Besides, identifying your target audience can help you choose the right social media platform to use. Remember, you’re launching a social media PR campaign to reach a specific audience. So, your social media PR strategies, no matter how effective you think they are, won’t work if you can’t reach that target audience in the first place. You need to choose the social channel/s they frequent from the start.

Once you’ve identified that type of audience you want to target with your social media PR campaign, you can send them surveys to know the social channels they prefer. It also helps if you look at your social media analytics data to get your social channel/s right.

3. Use hashtags

Hashtags are an essential element on all social media platforms. Just like getting the best web hosting for search engine optimization boosts your position on SERPs, using relevant hashtags on social media makes you more discoverable on social platforms. 

Hashtags help you engage better with your audience. You can create social media posts around specific hashtags and ask your audience to use those tags as they generate UGC.

With any brand-related post, specific, and not general, hashtags are key. If you use hashtags that are too general, the posts may only end up getting buried with the many other posts probably using the same familiar hashtags. Plus, specific hashtags can help you target that specific segment of your audience that’s likely to engage with your content. Even though many things can be written about your brand online, a designated hashtag lets people find your authentic brand content with ease.

Here’s an example from Adidas where they use the hashtag #ImpossibleIsNothing.

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Hashtags also make it easy to monitor consumer conversations online. They help you see what your customers are saying about your brand.

4. Ensure consistency

As discussed earlier, social media is a 24/7 cycle. This means your audience is constantly bombarded with a wide variety of information. Therefore, having a consistent posting strategy and engaging with your audience is essential for social media PR success.

Additionally, be consistent with your brand tone and voice. Even the visuals used should match your overall branding strategy.

In this fast-paced digital environment, where every second counts, leveraging platforms like Instagram can be a game-changer for your PR efforts. One powerful metric to consider is the engagement rate of your posts. The higher your engagement rate, the better your content is resonating with your audience.

Your brand should be instantly recognizable within a few moments of a user interacting with your content. This boosts your brand recognition and recall significantly.

5. Work with influencers

Influencers can greatly boost your social media PR efforts. And it’s never just about the number of followers. It’s about how well an influencer engages with their audience and whether they fit into your brand's niche.

Here’s an example from Always, where the company partnered with the then first lady of the USA, Michelle Obama, for a menstrual hygiene and equality awareness campaign.

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Seek influencers who share emotional and even personal content that’s relatable to their audience. Check to see how engaged their audiences are through the comments written. 

6. Be proactive

You must have a vibrant social media presence to succeed. Always keep an eye on your social media platforms and monitor hashtag usage, comments, and any social media activity around your brand. 

Responding to comments is a great way to make your customers feel seen. This encourages more engagement, helping you increase your share of voice. 

You must also make sure any crisis that may emerge is handled as quickly as possible. This is important because social media can seriously hurt your business reputation. A few bad comments could escalate into a full-blown PR crisis within hours. Prevent this by putting out the fires before they spread. 

7. Ensure compliance and ethics

Whatever you campaign is, you have to make sure your social media PR efforts adhere to ethical standards and relevant regulations. When it comes to social media ethics and compliance, there are several areas you need to consider:

• Data privacy and security: Organizations should put in place encryption, consent, and access control mechanisms especially when handling personal data.
• Advertising and marketing rules: Social media PR campaigns need to be transparent. Compliance with disclosure and appropriate targeting is key.
• Industry-specific regulations: Depending on the nature of your business, there are laws you also need to comply with even when using social media for PR. For instance, if you’re a financial institution, you need to adhere to regulations put in place by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. 

Compliance and ethics don’t just help prevent sanctions associated with non-adherence to laws and guidelines. They also help you manage your brand reputation and ensure the effectiveness of your PR and marketing campaigns. When users see you consider their overall welfare even when launching campaigns on social media, they won’t hesitate to interact with your brand and even take your desired action.

Social media PR campaign examples

Let’s now look at a few social media PR campaign examples. Hopefully, you’ll get practical insights and inspiration for your next social media PR campaign.

LEGO Group launched #RebuildTheWorld as their first brand campaign in years. The campaign highlighted the adventures of a hunter and a white rabbit in a LEGO universe where anything was possible. They turned to Twitter’s Promoted Trends and Promoted Trends Spotlight to capture the attention of their target audience. 

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In the words of the LEGO Group’s Global Director for Social Media, Ambreena Budaly, 

“When we wanted to launch our first brand campaign in years, we turned to Twitter’s Promoted Trends and Promoted Trend Spotlight. With Spotlight, we were able to pair our creative video asset with a high-impact placement that helped us drive awareness, generate tens of thousands of mentions, and inspire new conversations around our brand and the campaign.”

Within the first four days of the launch, the hashtag was repeated nearly 100,000 times. The positive sentiment for the LEGO brand also increased by 35%.

Axis Bank uses social media to share press releases, company announcements, and more with customers. Here’s an example.

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The bank has about half a million followers on Twitter and over three million followers on Facebook. Therefore, adding social media to their PR campaigns has greatly helped Axis Bank engage and communicate with their audience. 

Conclusion

Social media PR means managing a brand's image, reputation, and communication on platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram. It has transformed the PR landscape by creating a whole new industry in influencer marketing, which has proven very useful for public relations. Social media has also helped PR by facilitating effective communication around the clock.

Setting clear objectives, identifying your target audience, and using hashtags are some tips you should follow when using social media for your PR campaigns. Don’t forget to be consistent and proactive. Also, working with influencers and ensuring regulatory and ethical compliance are key.

Go ahead. It’s time for you to launch your brand’s next successful social media PR campaign.