Seven Steps to Conduct an Effective PR Campaign using Social Media

By Barbara Rozgonyi, who is a principal of CoryWest Media, LLC and creator of the Marketing Transformations Process™ in Glen Ellyn, IL. Barbara consults and speaks on how to translate branding, marketing, PR and social media into business development. Publisher of  http://wiredprworks.com, Barbara is the founder of Chicago’s Social Media Club chapter. Get in touch with Barbara at 630.207.7530 or corywestmedia@gmail.com.  Copyright 2010 Barbara Rozgonyi

Still sending out traditional news releases? If you’re looking for way to raise visibility, generate traffic, grow business and build an online community, consider testing out social media. Follow these seven steps to get started on conducting an effective public relations campaign to reach reporters, and the masses, using social media.

1. Set Campaign Goals

Traditional PR campaign goals often include placements in target publications along with the total number of media impressions. Search and social media news campaigns allow you to be more creative and effective. For example, do you want to reach out to bloggers, grow your community on twitter, build a Facebook group, generate more site traffic, attract more YouTube channel viewers, raise your social media visibility profile or get better search engine rankings? You can do all of these and still reach reporters on social networks. Schedule your releases to go out at least once a month. Higher frequency positions you as a newsmaker and one to watch. And, you’ll get more opportunities to fine-tune your message and measure results.

2. Being Newsworthy

Because social media sites are searchable, every action or comment can be public. You don’t need a press release to get noticed. You do need to be newsworthy on a consistent basis to sustain interested attention. As you’re crafting your campaign, think about whom you want to reach and why, what problems they have that you can solve, where they spend their time online and the sources they go to for news or help. For story ideas, focus on topics that relate to the specific area of expertise or business service you want to grow or highlight.  Now think about why and how your stories need to be told. How can you tie into trends or national events? Look at stories in the news now and find connections to what you do.

3. Targeting Media

Who do you want to tell your story? Do you already have a media list that includes  newspaper, trade publication, magazine, radio and TV reporters? Great. Now, find the reporters and their media outlets on Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter. Need a media list? Check out http://mediaontwitter.com. To expand your coverage, include bloggers and community sites in your niche. To find them, search for niche + blog, niche + community and niche + forum. If you have more than one area of expertise, for example young couples and entrepreneurs, segment your media list by contacts that cover each niche. 

4. Make Connections

Check out each reporter, media outlet, blogger and community to make sure that their audience would be interested in covering your stories. Look for reporters that write stories that match your topics. For example, business reporters cover different stories than lifestyle reporters. To connect on social networks, send a personal introduction request with a mention of the reporter’s work and let them know you are a resource in the area of your chosen expertise. If you have more than one area of expertise, match your message to the media.  Targeting bloggers? Comment on their posts and find out who’s who in their community. Get to know each media contact personally. It’s better to have a small intimate group than a large email list with no relationship.

5. Craft Search and Social Releases

A  search and social media release differs from a traditional press release in these important ways:

• Keyword search terms help readers find your news faster
• Images and video add dimension to the story
• Key points break up the content and underscore main ideas
• Built-in sharing options allow news to spread easily and quickly online.

6. Distribute to Share

Now that your social media release is ready to go, you can get the word out in a variety of ways. Choose a free or paid distribution service to send your news to search engines, wire services and industry-specific RSS feeds.  Two popular paid services are Business Wire and PR Newswire. Others include PRWeb, MarketWire and WebWire. For example, here's PRWeb's pricing. http://www.prweb.com/pr/press-release-price_steps.html. The higher your investment, the more detailed the statistics and reports. Set up an online newsroom to post the releases on your site or blog with an RSS feed option to automatically update subscribers. Reach out to media contacts and send a tweet with a link to your release. Leverage your company’s network connections by sharing the release and the link on your company’s social profiles sites.

7. Measure Results

Go back to your campaign goals and see how your results measure up. To see how your release performs on search engines, enter your key terms. Type the release headline in the search bar to see what sites picked it up.  With social media, set up a search term, called a hashtag, to group results across channels. For twitter results, use  http://tweetreach.com to track your hashtag’s reach by twitter user. To check out mentions across multiple social media channels, check out http://ubervu.com.
Did you achieve your results? How can you improve next time?