02nd Apr 2020 by Jamal Lawrence

How Do Social & PR Work Together? | 10 Yetis Podcast

How Do Social & PR Work Together | 10 Yetis Podcast

Public Relations is an area of marketing that has dramatically changed as social media has evolved over the years. Social media has provided a route for PR activity to broaden its audience and pay a part in increasing web ranking and SEO. It allows brands to break down the barrier between them and the public. Having a marketing strategy that includes both PR and social media has become an essential approach in maximising your end result. We’ve broken down a few tips on how PR and social media can work effectively together in our first episode of the 10 Yetis Podcast. Let us know your favourite ways to use social media and PR together via our social channels handles.

Transcript:

Shannon:

"Hey everyone, my name is Shannon and I am the managing director of 10Yetis, this is the first podcast that we have tried so, let’s see how this pans out, today’s podcast we are going to talk about how public relations and social media can work well together and why it is important to consider both when you are looking at your marketing campaigns. So I am joined by Jam who is our Social Media Account Exec"

Jamal:

"Hi guys"

Shannon:

"So I’ve been with the agency for about 11 years now and when I started off we obviously mostly did public relations campaigns but we’ve grown to now have other departments as well because we started to realise that when you have like a PR campaign there was often need for a social media element or a video element so we now have all of those services so we can provide them to clients.

So the cross-platform campaigns that we do for clients, just to give you a little example of that it might be something like a widget or an online tool that we develop to try and get media coverage for a client, and from my point of view where social media comes into that is that is great for kind of sharing those tools or those really good pieces of content to try and get more eyes on it Also when one of our clients get really good PR coverage for a big tool like that and we will talk to our social media team if they are dealing for the social account for that or if the social team is in-house, we will then pass that on so that they can talk about and try and get more people to use it and get more traffic to that page."

Jamal:

"Yeah, it's definitely a good way to increase the reach of coverage and features and widgets, you get a live response from the audience, whether that's likes, comments, shares you get a good level of engagement and it's something that's pretty instant as well."

Shannon:

"I think a lot of briefs that we get from clients on the PR side now are PR for SEO campaigns, so we’ll get clients coming to us and just asking for links that's all they care about, it's not so much about getting a big double-page spread in one of the nationals, they want a really good piece of coverage on a high domain authority website and that all-important follow link, although social media have you know that direct impact on SEO it also has an indirect impact on it by, like Jam was just saying, if you get more people driven to it by social media it's going to help the traffic for that online tool or that piece of content, perhaps it’s a page that your hosting a video on and that kind of traffic is all going to have a positive knock-on effect."

Jamal:

"So yeah, it's about using social media to spread that message as well, it's just a good way to narrow down your audience, whether it's organic or paid it’s just another tool to your armoury really."

Shannon:

"One of the things that I also wanted to go through was in terms of how with crisis communication, social media can play a really important part in that, so, for example, a lot of media will pick up on negative things that's happening on social media, so they might see that somebody had a complaint about a company and has gone public on you know Twitter, or another platform so it's really important I guess for the social teams to kind of look at that and lock it down quite quickly and move the conversation offline, so Jam I guess you know you’ve got a lot of experience with kind of keeping an eye out for things like this."

Jamal:

"So yeah, like you said it's just a way to learn and keep an eye out to see how your releases are doing and how your PR activities are doing, and if it's not working as if you want it too, you can easily manage it. If you want to take a conversation that's public into your private messages you can do that and hopefully address the situation to help it get better."

Shannon:

"So what's like the steps that you guys take, I mean I know them but just for the benefit of everybody else, the steps that you kind of take if there was one of the client accounts that you were looking after there was a really negative conversation happening which you know, the media could quickly pick up on that in terms of somebody having quite a serious complaint and what kind of steps would you then take to move that conversation away from the public eye and try and control it."

Jamal:

"Yeah, so really it is just getting to the situation as quickly as possible, and then try taking it offline as quickly as we can, so we’ve got to try and keep the person who has the complaint or issue happy so it doesn’t spread any further and then see if we can adjust the situation through private messaging, emails just so it’s not visible to everybody else."

Shannon:

"Yeah definitely, I think the media are using social platforms more and more to find their stories, whether that's the good, the bad, the ugly they’re just kind of looking to those sources for new news essentially. So I think it kind of brings me onto a good point in terms of, it's kind of seeding out a story through social, you’re obviously going to have the PR team working on getting those stories in front of journalists and another good way to make sure that happens is to kind of share things out on social so say that a journalist could potentially pick it up from there, you know also, for example, you get a great piece of coverage on one big national newspaper website, perhaps you then share that on your social channels and that kind of gets more out into the public eye, and then journalists from other publications might see that, if they haven't already seen it directly on that competitor’s outlet, then they might pick it up from there and turn it into a story as well, we see that quite often, with the news agenda you will often see one publication referencing another publication as the source, you know ‘according to the SUN or according to the Mail Online.’ It's a bit like a domino effect, yeah yeah exactly, exactly that so I think you know, that's why it's important to kind of have your PR team and your social team sharing these good pieces as you don't know what kind of snowball effect that could have."

Jamal:

"It’s also another way to boost brand awareness with PR, is through press releases obviously, it’s just a good way to subtly get your brand out there and improve brand awareness, so whilst doing that you can then combine social media with that to drive your traffic and drive sales, if that is the metric you are looking to get."

Shannon:

"One of the other things that I think ties in well to the media looking to social for stories, is not just the things that are going wrong or the negatives, it's also you know the fun kind of positive things that are happening, so I remember not too long ago I think it was a stand-off between Dominos and Pizza Hut and they were kind of going off against each other on social because somebody had had a bad experience with one of them and the takeaway hadn't arrived on time something like that and the other one jumped in and as a random act or kindness sent them a takeaway as if they were coming to the rescue and it got played out on twitter and that then got picked up by the media. So it’s kind of these naturally occurring stories that can kind of make their way into the press for your brands, so I think if people are doing something clever on social media that can again turn into a really good PR story for you."

Jamal:

"Random acts of kindness is a great way to just get your brand out there whilst piggy-backing on other competitors' negative stories maybe, like the Pizza Hut and Dominos example Shannon has just said. It’s just a great way to improve your visibility and your brand awareness."

Shannon:

"One of the things we do a lot of are PR campaigns that require the public input in some way, so maybe you need them to submit a picture for a picture competition or maybe its a best job in the world type stunt that we need applications for or it could just be something as simple as a competition. So the role that then social obviously plays in that is yes we could if the prize is good enough, then we could get that competition or job stunt coverage in the media, but to kind of kick-start it off and get more applications coming through you can then obviously use social to create some good content around it on there and try and have like a call to action for people to apply, so I think that's really important to consider, with any sort of PR campaign you’re doing if you need the public to get on board, it then gives that opportunity for a follow-up story as well so quite often if its a job stunt or something like that, we will then talk about once we’ve hit a certain number of applications and that then gives the opportunity for another story and obviously once you’ve selected the winner there’s a kind of the third bite at the cherry there as well."

Jamal:

"Also yeah, once these stunts are live it gives a great angle for social because you can then tune in to social listening which is good for branding obviously because then you can interact with each and every one of your applicants in the comment section and it just gives that personal feel to your brand really."

Shannon:

"Yeah, and I guess you would probably look to do something like if it was creating a competition that was aimed at a certain demographic, with things like Facebook you can really drill down that target audience and it's quite nice to maybe add opportunities to kind of promote that ad bit more and get more eyes on it."

Jamal:

"Oh yeah definitely and even, so you can do it across Facebook alone, but depending on the angle of the story or the competition, you can then spread it over different social platform like for example Twitter is more of a B2B platform, so if you are looking to target businesses or professionals you can change your ad strategy on say Twitter, or LinkedIn as well would be a great one for that."

Shannon:

"That’s a really good point and I think, as you know while we’re talking about social media as a whole, I think it's important to make sure although your using to complement your PR strategy, every channel is different and has slightly different audiences and so I guess it is important to make sure you have taken that into account and maybe editing the content slightly that you’re sharing out and the way that you are doing.

One of the other really good things about social media when it comes to your PR campaigns you can also use it to find what journalists are working on, for example on twitter there is a really good hashtag which is #JournoRequest if you follow that hashtag you will often find journalists looking for experts, or products, or just general data or information to add into their stories, so that's a really good one to follow. Similarly, just get to know those journalists on Twitter or other platforms, maybe even LinkedIn and connect with them, and try and just built that rapport with them in terms of finding out how you can connect with them in the best way let them know what kind of clients you’ve got things like that and so I guess Jam there are really good ways of building lists and stuff to make sure you are monitoring it all or like tools you can use to make it all nice and all in one place."

Jamal:

"Social media is also a great way to track the journalists you want to work with or journalists you are looking to outreach too, you can use tools such as HootSuite to track twitter hashtags like #JournoRequests and plus you can use Twitter lists as well as a great way to store all the journalists you follow or the different media pages you’re looking to outreach to so it's just another great way to outreach to different journo’s. Yeah, I use Twitter lists a lot. It's really good for breaking it down into certain sectors of the media and to keep track of it for certain clients so yeah that’s really good.

So yeah, that’s a quick overview of how social media and PR can work together in many different ways, I hope you’ve enjoyed the podcast and we’ll see you again!"


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