Five ways Twitter can help boost your PR efforts

When engaging in a public relations campaign, companies tend to rely heavily on building an audience solely through media coverage, without capitalising on other ways to amplify their presence alongside it.

Social media, and Twitter more specifically, serves as a complementary tool that can be used to add greater value to media coverage achieved, helping to prolong the life of the coverage and bring further reach to a brand. Understanding the various tactics in using different social media channels can help a brand gain greater traction and attention, adding further value to any PR campaign.

Here are five ways Twitter can be used to help boost your PR efforts:

Sharing coverage clippings more than once over the course of a week
It’s important to have a pre-built social media calendar that assists in scheduling content and tweets to followers. This gives you greater foresight planning and can create a constant flow of communication with followers. One thing many brands fail to do is to reuse content after it’s already been shared, unaware of the additional reach they’ll gain by strategically pushing things back to the top of their followers feed.

Media coverage that is gained throughout the course of a campaign can be shared between two and three times per week, prolonging the life of the content. It’s important to schedule this sendout at various times of the day throughout the week, giving more opportunity for followers to read something they may have missed the first time around. Building this tactic into your social media calendar can help get further reach out of coverage, beyond the initial placement.

Engage in conversation with industry influencers
Limiting conversation on Twitter solely to followers is a mistake many brands make. Companies have the opportunity to begin to form relationships and engage in conversations with influencers relevant to their industry. Whether it’s a prominent journalist in the field or a potential new customer’s CEO, following industry influencers will allow you to stay up-to-date on discussions happening within the industry, as well as engage in various conversations that may be having an impact on your own company. It’s important to take part and position your company as a thought leader on these hot-button industry issues.

Share articles and content related to your industry
Some brands will limit their feeds to content that is curated internally, without expanding their content to include articles from journalists or other influencers from the field. Expanding your Twitter content to include articles, whitepapers or blogs from other industry influencers can offer followers a more well-rounded view of events or topics relevant to the industry. Furthermore, this is a great way to expand your audience base by sharing pieces that other individuals took time in creating. This positions your brand as a leader in the industry and at the forefront of everything that is happening in the field.

Host a Twitter chat
Many brands avoid a predetermined time to host something online, missing out on the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with their important followers. Hosting a Twitter chat offers brands the chance to connect in real-time with a lot of their supporters, receiving feedback or getting their perspective on a particular topic. This can lend itself as a resource for future content, business development ideas or simply serve as a way to get to know your audience more closely.

Invite followers, influencers, and even a guest host to attend the chat with a designated hashtag associated with the chat. This helps to generate some additional reach and interaction outside of your day-to-day engagement.

Build a community of followers
It’s typical for many brands and companies to tweet only when they have news to share, rather than keeping a consistent flow of messages going out between them and their audience. A static Twitter feed limits a brand’s engagement levels, and for followers, makes them feel as though the brand only engages with the when they want something. It’s important to use Twitter as a tool to build a community of people you can rely on and communicate with on an ongoing basis.

Using these tactics above can help amplify any company’s PR efforts, extending the life of media coverage and content, and assist in building a community that is able to share and engage with you more regularly.

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