With the vast number of social media sites out there like Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google+, navigating your way through the social media maze and keeping ‘on top’ of the latest trends can be a difficult task.

However daunting it may seem, businesses must consider the social media platform. Regardless of whether you like to use it on a personal level or not, social media has become a powerful communication platform that has transformed the way people find and share information.

From a business perspective, social media enables companies to engage communities, manage customer service needs and connect with multiple stakeholders in real-time.

Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as creating a Facebook page and the job is done. Creating a strong and effective social media presence takes a fine-tuned strategy and a little TLC, making sure you show your followers that you appreciate them through incentives, feedback, entertainment and providing content that is useful and engaging.

For a long time, PR professionals have recognised the importance of online, digital and social media communications and as a PR Consultancy, we always urge our clients not to put ‘all their eggs in one basket’. In fact, all our successful PR campaigns now feature Facebook or a range of social media components along with traditional forms of communication.

Managing the social media aspect of these campaigns can include representing your brand, participating, initiating and coordinating conversations and competitions, answering questions, providing a support system for your clients and empowering them to become a champion for your products/services.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach either. The way you use social media to communicate with your customers, clients, and/or wider community depends on your business type and what you want to achieve.

When it comes to social media, it’s all about knowing your objectives and your audience and how to engage them and who better to do this than professional communicators who are well-trained to be responsive and transparent, with relative speed and immediacy, characteristics that have never been more important than in this new social and digital media age.

If you want to find out more about establishing and effective social media communications strategy contact us today.

With the introduction of the Internet and now social media, video over the last ten years – and particularly in the last few – has become the single most utilised method to gather information. In fact, according to a recent study, video now accounts for HALF of all web traffic, making it the most popular form of communication online.

Living in a fast-paced world in which we are bombarded with marketing messages, good quality video is one of the most effective ways to break through the clutter. People want easy and fast information and video allows them to have that. After all, it is much more efficient to click on a video link than to read a page of text – such as this .

Video is also one of the most effective ways of gaining attention, using both visual effects and audio to create lasting impressions.

With Youtube alone making up for 12% of ALL web traffic and now the ability to embed video on social media sites, high quality web-optimised video is key to having a competitive advantage in today’s marketplace.

A good quality video is one of the best ways to spread a message and to introduce or promote a product, service or brand. Corporate companies, businesses and even individuals are using videos as sales tools to set themselves apart from their competitors and accelerate their business. Good quality video enables you to:

• Present a professional image of your business
• Increase brand recognition
• Grab attention
• Give an overall view of you and your business in a compelling way
• Compliment and add credibility to other marketing campaigns
• Increase your sales, profits, customer base and Google search ranking.

One of the greatest things about video is that it isn’t restricted to online. Videos can make an incredible marketing tool at exhibitions, presentations, seminars and trade shows. Also, having a promotional video on your website is a ‘sure-fire’ way to connect with and generate sales from online customers.

Here are a few more interesting facts about video From Forrester and ComScore:

• Video is 98% more likely to place you on the first page of search engines
• Video on a web page increases response rates by an average of 45%
• 89 million people will watch 1.2 billion videos online TODAY.

With the country in the grips of an economic crisis that could slip into a recession, most companies are quite rightly taking a long hard look at their bottom line, but public relations budgets should be protected and expanded, not slashed.

Now, as a PR consultant running my own company, you would expect me to say this but while the cynics out there might say that’s my own bit of spin, it is also common sense.
It is interesting that while the Public Relations Institute of Australia is celebrating 62 years of Public Relations in Australia this year, there remains in this country a lot of common misconceptions about what Public Relations is, how it works and what the benefits are so these are the areas on which I would like to focus in this article.

Public relations is all about reputation and relationships and in times of crisis, which brings with it increased competition across most industries, reputation and the relationships you have with your stakeholders is everything.  If you maintain your reputation and value your relationships, then you are more likely to survive a recession and come out the other side stronger.

Public relations is not the same as marketing or advertising, though they often work closely together.  Public relations is about communicating with your target audience to improve your reputation, and when done effectively, it can be very powerful.  It is now, more than ever that companies need to develop creative ways to nurture their existing clients.  After all, they are the best form of PR you’ve got.

So is Public Relations for you?  Well, the answer is yes, but what you need, its complexity and the investment needed will depend on your size, the complexity and number of your target audiences and the strategies you undertake.

Perhaps the simplest form of PR is sending out a media release to promote you and your business but the smart PR money is in taking a more strategic approach to ensure that you are investing your time, energy and money wisely.  If sending out a release is part of your strategy, you want to be sure that it focuses on the right issues, goes to the right media outlets and ultimately is published in the way you intend.  For example if you have a fashion boutique in Brisbane, there would be little point in sending a media release to a sporting magazine in Victoria, unless you specialise in sports fashion and have an online store.

In developing a public relations strategy, like everything, expertise is important so seeking professional advice is recommended.  This doesn’t mean it is going to cost you a hefty percentage of your business but a professional will help you shape a strategy that works.

However, you can begin work on your strategy by looking closely at the who, what, when, where, how and why – what communicators refer to as the 5W&H, of what you do.

What are your goals and objectives?  What is your point of difference? What makes you different from your competitor? What is it you want to achieve from your communication?  Think specifically about this from the point of view of reputation and relationships.
Who is it that you want to reach?  Where are they? Why them? It helps to be specific here, break your customers or clients up into key groups.  You need to identify basic demographic information such as how old they are, what they do, and how much they make, but also what they enjoy, what they read or watch and how they prefer you communicate with them?
What is it that you need them to know about you?  What do you want from them? What feeling do you want them to have when they experience your services?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions then some research is necessary.  Getting your information wrong here can mean an incorrectly targeted campaign and therefore poor results.
From here a public relations professional can help you to identify some strategies and tactics to communicate with your target audiences that, that will achieve your public relations objectives. This is the How of the process.  In terms of tactics there is literally an endless list from media relations and direct communications devices such as news and e-letters, to community meetings, online social network campaigns, sponsorship and events, lobbying, and the list goes on and often also includes quirky approaches and sometimes stunts.
An important point to remember is that a good public relations campaign should also include evaluation of the tactics used so you can constantly test, measure and change future activities.