Achieving Greater ROI from Your Communications and PR Campaigns
By: Cooper Zajac, Director of Digital Marketing & Communications
I’ve never considered myself a religious man, but lately I’ve found myself preaching one key message to clients repeatedly – the need to recognize the importance of harnessing social media as part of their ongoing communication and PR efforts regardless of their industry. Gone are the days of press kits and faxing press releases. Social Media has become a game changer, and not just for consumer brands. Don’t believe me? Facebook alone has over 2.89 billion monthly active users along with Twitter having over one billion registered users. For all the B2B naysayers, even LinkedIn has nearly 740 million members in 200 countries with over 55 million registered companies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media continues to plays a crucial role for companies connecting with people and further developing professional relationships, not only with key influencers and journalists covering their sector, but also provides a great opportunity to establish customer service by gathering input, answering questions and listening to feedback on pertinent business issues.
Looking beyond the pandemic, the insights you gain from social media listening provide your organization with a better understanding of what’s working and what’s not, and goes a long way in helping your public image. There is a reason, you see most companies across all sectors post on social media for every holiday, or month-long observances. The truth is what your company values matters, not only to customers, but your stakeholder as well. Social media is an accessible platform to reach your target audience, share your key messages, and know in real-time what people are saying about your company as well as your competitors.
Companies can start to reap the benefits by integrating an effective social media strategy with a traditional PR campaign.
- Streamlined Delivery. For starters, social media allows you to get your message out to your target audience faster than traditional means. You can create content and share information immediately, whether it’s a news announcement, survey data, or a new senior hire to catch the eye of a reporter of industry influencer.
- Greater ROI. Social media is also a great way to repurpose long form content into short bite sized easily consumable nuggets of information. Whether is a white paper research report or a new survey, social media gives companies channels highlight specific messages that might’ve gone overlooked in the original source material.
- Sharing & Engagement. Folks are constantly sharing and engaging information across social media, so channels like LinkedIn are useful tools to get the word out to more people and engage with your target audience
- Cost-Effective. Social media offers a cost-effective approach that can help dramatically increase both visibility and brand awareness.