It sounds an awful lot like social media PR to me.

It’s something I have to get off my chest. I run a social media marketing firm, sure. But many of the skills that I use, either in advising clients or in using the various channels, reads like what you should do when you’re being a responsible public relations representative who’s reaching out to a journalist to pitch a story.  Everyone’s a potential source of a sudden massive Twitter revolt, so you need to treat everyone you encounter online as if they had the potential to direct the attention of a hundred thousand potential clients at your brand. With that thought in mind, here’s a quick primer on how to convert those traditional PR skills into social media marketing ones.

• Participate in the dialog: Don’t try to hijack it.  In the social media world, you can’t try the old “interruption marketing” techniques.
  • Think of it like: Don’t be the guy who tries to pitch how your company has a useful slant on every story that’s trending.  When you’re using social media monitoring tools, only enter in conversations that your brand can be expected to engage in.
• Be useful: Posting the same link a dozen times a day? Not useful. Posting a dozen links a day to insightful articles & commentary? Useful. Just make sure that you know what your following considers “useful.”
  • Think of it like: Don’t pitch off-topic. Journalists hate it and the general public hates it, too.
• Be respectful: Everything you say on social media channels can be read, quite possibly, for the rest of your brand’s life. Make sure that you’re not saying things that you might regret in a week, a month, a decade, or even later.
  • Think of it like: Being respectful.
• Nurture relationships: There are thousands of people out there who are crucial nexuses in the ebb and flow of your industry’s conversation. Find them. Friend / follow / verb them. Nurture the relationship, because you never know when you’ll need it.
  • Think of it like: How you develop relationships with a good reporter. Citizen journalism is where a lot of the conversation’s moving to, so be prepared.
• Establish authority: Your brand needs a single voice that everyone knows that they can go to when there’s an urgent question. Social media is a slippery beast, and you can easily have eight different employees all messaging on your brand from different sources. Make sure that it’s obvious which outlet is the official one, and let your employees know when they should feel free to answer questions about the brand and when they should refer the questions to you.
  • Think of it like: Every company that’s large enough needs a communications policy. This is just an extension of that. Think long and hard about limiting all communications on social media channels; they’re rapidly becoming as essential to whole swathes of the population as email is, and surely you don’t think that employees shouldn’t have email?

Compared to someone with a background in broadcast media advertising or in outdoor sales, a PR pro has a huge leg up when a client or member of your business is looking for someone to ride herd on social media. Make use of your people skills, communications expertise, and dive right in!

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