Strategic Social Media Tips For Brands

By Kate Templeton

Social media has become a prominent and critical tool in the world of public relations. The online presence of a company can either make or break its reputation. When working in PR, it’s important to understand this powerful tool and how to find the most success while using strategic social media tactics. Here are a few tips for using social media to positively support a brand’s digital presence.

Use Hashtags Professionally.

Hashtags are a great tool to grow an online following and engage with users. There are specific social media tactics that are important when using hashtags. For some brands, using the same hashtag on every post creates consistency. This eventually can be seen as a slogan for the company, and all posts that accompany the hashtag are easy to find. Hashtags can also be used to gain traction and reach more users. Because they are easily searched, using relevant hashtags that appeal to the audience will help the brand expand.

Pay Attention to Your Audience.

Discovering what the audience cares about is a crucial step in creating an online brand. Public relations professionals have the opportunity to listen to the conversations their audiences are having on social media platforms. Responding to comments, questions and listening to critiques will help a brand find more success.

Consistency is Key.

When developing a strong social media presence, it is essential to pay attention to the full image the brand portrays online. Developing a consistent look and voice will help establish a solidified image throughout. The design and graphic elements should be similar to increase audience engagement and differentiate the brand from others.

Create a Strategy.

Not every social media platform is going to be beneficial for every brand. Organizations should only focus on social platforms that add value to their company. Create and implement a social media strategy that will meet the brands’ unique goals and objectives.

Analytics, Analytics, Analytics!

It’s one thing to post consistently on social media accounts, but it is another to actually grasp how the audience is responding. The use of analytics is necessary when evaluating the effectiveness of social media strategies. This can help companies reach the correct audiences that positively impact the brand. (Check out Sierra’s blog post last week for more insights on social media analytics)!

You will now be one step ahead when using social media to professionally maintain a client’s brand!

What You Need to Know About Social Media Analytics

By Sierra Goodman

Social media analytics is a measuring tool that helps professionals monitor their digital audience and performance. Analytics allows them to see what strategies work and what strategies don’t in order to use the platforms as efficiently as possible. Reading and understanding these numbers can be a bit daunting and difficult to interpret. As rising PR professionals, social media analytics can bolster a resume and portfolio with quantifiable results. Here is what you need to know about social media analytics:

Reading SM Analytics

Filtering through all of the noise is the first step to categorize the information and understand what is and isn’t important. Facebook and Twitter provide free built-in analytics through the platform. If you are looking for deeper insights, you may want to consider “freemium” social media management applications such as Google Analytics, Meltwater, Hootsuite, and Buffer. Many employers use these programs to help clients run their social media accounts and set goals.

While these programs will do some of the legwork, running a social media audit by categorizing past post into themes (videos, links, photos, etc.) will help you determine which themes produce the best results. This, in turn, will help you figure out which content to invest more time and energy. For example, you discover that over the past three months, posts about new products receive significantly more likes and shares than events. This could help you and your organization pivot to create more content that your viewers like to see.

Reach VS. Engagement

Reach and engagement are often confused to mean the same thing. Reach refers to the number of people that have viewed your post while engagement is all the likes, shares and comments your post has received. Engagement may be oddly high at times — when this happens some investigation may be needed. Perhaps a post went viral or became popular for a reason. The high engagement will affect your data for about a month until it gets back to normal. This occurs because of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms that send posts with high engagement to the top of people’s feeds.

Boost Your Portfolio and Resume

It’s a competitive world out there and social media analytics can help boost your resume and portfolio with tangible results. Running the social media account for a club, organization, nonprofit, or even your own professional accounts will show employers your social media knowledge extends beyond personal use.

When you first start tracking analytics, be sure to record the number of followers and the average post engagement and reach. That way you can determine how you have increased followers, engagement and reach over time. It is one thing to say you “increased social media presence” but you offer more credibility if you can say that you increased followers by 25 percent and the average engagement by 30 percent over a six-month period. Plus, you can turn your results into an infographic to make your portfolio aesthetically pleasing.

If you want to learn more about social media analytics, sign up for Kelli Matthew’s strategic social media class at the SOJC.