Social Media PR: 4 Actionable Tactics To Improve Your PR

Social media merges seamlessly with traditional public relations, creating what’s known as social media PR.

In social media PR, you essentially use digital platforms such as Facebook and X to enhance your brand reputation. 

Social media PR allows for direct communication with your audience, which helps build stronger relationships. It also helps you provide instant updates, keeping your audience well-informed and engaged. Additionally, you can broaden your reach, which means more people will know about your brand’s good image.  

In this article, we’ll explore key strategies to boost your social media PR efforts. Whether you’re looking to improve your own brand reputation or your client’s, you’ve come to the right place.

1. Create quality content

First of all, quality content is a must for attracting and keeping your target audience. 

To ensure that your content resonates with your social media followers, customize it to their interests and demands. You can know what they want by looking at your analytics or sending surveys.

Keep high standards for all your content as well. Every piece, be it a social media update or a video, should be well-crafted and polished. Invest in high-quality pictures and skilled editing to ensure your publications are clear and visually appealing. 

Nike’s global #DreamCrazier campaign is a great example of high-quality content. The PR campaign featured inspiring stories of female athletes overcoming adversity, aligning with Nike’s brand values, and motivating its followers. 

This content was widely discussed and shared across the internet, highlighting its global impact. This shows how impactful content can be when it’s visually appealing and matches the interests of its target audience.

Using different types of content can significantly expand your reach and impact. For example, you can incorporate a mix of text, images, videos, and infographics to cater to your audience’s different preferences. The variety can keep your content fresh and increase its shareability, helping you attract and engage more and more followers.

Exploring generative AI solutions can also transform your content creation process. It’s worth exploring a generative AI guide to find out how this technology can boost both your creativity and efficiency.

Plus, you don’t have to create every piece of content from scratch. One great way to ensure your social media content calendar never runs out of quality content is to repurpose existing content. And this has been made even easier by AI tools. 

For example, you can repurpose a blog post using an article summarizer tool to extract key points. Then, republish the key points on your social media channels.

2. Engage with your audience

Engaging actively with your audience is key to effective social media PR. 

Interactive posts are a great way to get your audience talking and involved. By including polls and challenges as part of your content, you can motivate people to interact and provide feedback. This keeps your followers interested and helps you discover what they enjoy and want to see more of. 

You can also build an active online community. This requires consistent communication. Always make time to react to comments and communications promptly. This shows your followers that you appreciate their feedback and are paying close attention.

When responding to feedback, don’t just zero in on positive comments. Respond to negative feedback as well. This would also be a great opportunity to provide personalized feedback to customers having a negative experience. Use the best digital business card providers to create a branded e-business card and share it as a link. The card allows customers to get in touch with someone from your team who can resolve the issue and reaffirm your brand’s commitment to delivering exceptional customer experience. 

Regular interactions like these turn casual followers into dedicated members of your community. Showing that your brand is friendly and responsive creates a positive relationship with your target audience.

Highlighting user-generated content (UGC) is also a powerful engagement tactic in social media PR. In fact, social media PR campaigns incorporating UGC see a 50% increase in engagement​.

For example, the outdoor apparel brand Outdoor Voices reposts content from its customers and tags them on the posts.

When you highlight content created by your audience, such as images, videos, or reviews, it diversifies your feed and makes your followers feel recognized and valued. This recognition can encourage more followers to share their own experiences and content. Ultimately, it can boost overall engagement and interaction and enhance your social media PR efforts.

3. Collaborate with influencers

Partnering with the right influencers is critical for boosting your brand’s reach and resonance. But, it’s important to work with influencers who share your brand values and have a following that matches your target demographic.

A great example of a brand successfully leveraging influencer partnerships for social media PR is Glossier. The cosmetics brand collaborated with Olivia Rodrigo. They chose Olivia because of her strong influence among younger demographics and her alignment with the brand’s values.

Select influencers whose followers reflect your target consumer base. This way, they can help you improve the effect of your PR and social media campaigns and ensure that your marketing efforts resonate more deeply with potential customers.

After selecting the right influencer for your online store, create a campaign your target audience will see as authentic. A one-off post showing the influencer promoting your eCommerce store may not be as effective as a series of posts published over months showcasing how exactly they use and benefit from your product in their daily lives. 

Another way to ensure authenticity is to allow social media influencers to create their content. You can give them your brand guidelines, but avoid being a micro-manager and getting in the way of their creativity.

Tracking and measuring the impact of your influencer partnerships is essential to understanding their effectiveness and refining your strategies. Metrics like engagement rates, conversion rates, and reach can give useful information on how well your collaborations are performing.

Using a reliable social media management tool can streamline this process, allowing you to gather data much efficiently and optimize your influencer marketing campaigns.

4. Run focused social media campaigns the right way

Lastly, it’s crucial to focus on setting clear goals in your social media campaigns. Before launching, try to figure out what you want to achieve. Do you aim to increase brand awareness? Drive sales? Engaging a specific segment of your audience? Your goals will ensure your social media PR content and tactics are on point.

For instance, if you want to increase brand awareness, your campaign should aim to reach as many people as possible with content that’s interesting and easy to share. On the other hand, if your goal is to boost sales, then you should focus on strategies that encourage people to buy, like special promotions and ads targeted at specific groups.

One way to run focused social media campaigns is through hosting live or virtual events. These could be a product launch, a webinar, or a community-building event. Partner with influencers and industry experts to promote these events and boost attendance. Use a ticketing platform to streamline event promotion and attendee management.

You should also leverage cross-platform strategies. With this approach, you can significantly enhance the reach and effectiveness of your social media marketing campaigns. 

Different social media channels target various groups and provide unique tools and designs for engagement. By deploying your content across many social media platforms, you can optimize exposure while also personalizing your message to the unique traits and preferences of each platform’s user base.

For example, with its two billion active monthly users, Instagram can be used to create visually appealing content. X might be more suitable for real-time communication and updates. 

As part of personalization, take advantage of targeting features as well.

Incorporating Performance Max campaigns into your social media PR strategy can significantly boost your campaign’s efficiency and effectiveness. This tactic leverages Google Ads’ AI to ensure your content reaches the ideal audience at the best times, perfectly aligning with your public relations goals like increasing brand awareness or driving sales. 

On platforms like Facebook and X, you can also set your content’s target audience criteria–by interests, gender, or location, for example—before launching your campaign.

In closing

The success of your social media PR efforts is crucial to your eCommerce business growth. You now have four effective strategies for increasing visibility and strengthening your connection with your audience.

To enhance your brand’s impact, focus on offering valuable content, engaging with your audience, collaborating with influencers, and launching targeted social media campaigns. 

Act now to harness the full potential of social media in public relations, and watch your strategies make a difference.