Crafting a social media PR strategy for your company can be a daunting task. New Web 2.0 sites are launching all the time. As a marketer, how do you know where to engage? And once you’ve put yourself out there, how do you measure the results?
Brian Solis has been helping companies through these challenges for several years. He’s a principal at FutureWorks, a PR and new media agency in Silicon Valley, and a popular blogger. Earlier today, he stopped by CBS Interactive to discuss his new book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.
There’s a lot for marketing professionals to keep in mind as they make a first foray into social media. Here are three points that Solis emphasizes:
- Listen to what’s going on before you engage. There are a lot of social media sites out there. Solis has organized a good number of them in what he calls the “Conversation Prism,” a chart that arrays several Web 2.0 tools by category and purpose. Start by visiting these sites and searching your company’s name. You may be surprised at where your brand is getting the most traction. It’s not all about Twitter and Facebook. Solis says Google and Yahoo Groups usually register near the top of most companies’ lists. After you’ve figured out where you’re being talked about, listen in to the conversation for awhile before deciding where your company should be an active participant.
- Social media is not a popularity contest. Businesses may be tempted to quantify their PR success on social media sites by pointing to the number of followers they’ve established. But Solis says that misses the point. The end goal of PR (whether on- or offline) is to inspire action, not get clips in the newspaper or build an enormous friend list. He says that “regardless of the network, it’s the investment in relationships and thoughtfulness” of the communication that matters. It’s what builds social currency and influences people.
- Measure conversations. Social media allows marketers to study their impact at a much more granular level than they were ever able to do with traditional media. To get a sense of your impact online, Solis recommends building an index where you track the outcome of a specific thread or tweet. How many people picked up on it and how many people follow them? Keep the data in an Excel spreadsheet and chart it over time. These kinds of metrics can be useful when you have to justify to your boss why you’ve been playing with all the new Web 2.0 tools in your cubicle all day.
