With the ever-growing field of PR, practitioners need to adapt to the world around them. One of the newer resources to PR is social media. While social media is often dismissed as a serious strategy, it can be vital to PR campaigns in some cases. If you’re wondering how social media can work for you or how social media influences PR, here are four ways that social media is a valuable tool to PR.
1. Improves brand loyalty
Using social media to connect and interact with your audience is incredibly important when it comes to PR. When it comes to people spreading the word about your business, you want to make sure that those people are loyal to your brand. Using social media is an easy way to increase brand loyalty and you don’t have to be a technology guru in order to do so. By simply interacting with your followers and creating engaging content on social media, your followers will be more likely to remember your brand. Creating engaging content will also allow your customers to feel like they are a part of your brand and, therefore, they will be more likely to spread the word about your product or business.
2. Increases engagement
Social media is also a great way to increase engagement with your customers. And again, this does not have to be done in an overly complex way. Using social media allows for you to get your name out there and allows people who may not have known about your business or product to see who you are and what your brand is. Creating posts that followers can interact with is also vital when it comes to using social media. Engaging posts can be something as simple as an Instagram poll or asking a question in the caption of a photo. When customers have something to interact with on social media, they will be more likely to remember your business and will feel as if they are a part of it.
3. Creates measurable results
If you want an easy way to measure the results of a PR campaign, social media is the way to do it. Sites like Instagram allow you to see how many likes you get, how many people reposted your picture, and how many people saved your post. Social media sites also allow you to access your analytics in a free and uncomplicated way. With Instagram, all you have to do is register your account as a business and you will be able to measure your engagement. These measurable results are a great way to see what your followers like and what types of posts do best.
4. Creates brand identity
Along with creating brand loyalty, social media is an easy way to create a brand identity, which is essential when it comes to PR. When it comes to establishing a brand identity you will want to create a color palette specific to your business, use branded hashtags, and have certain image styles that you use. For example, if you are a clothing shop you will want to post about topics related to your store and fashion in general. You would also use hashtags specific to your business and to the clothing industry. Creating a brand identity is an easy way to become recognizable on social media and having an identity will allow your followers to associate certain themes and colors with your business.