I think that as a modern PR practitioner, many mediums of social media must be utilized to actively communicate with your publics. Many social news and social media sites can be confusing and aggravating. The following 5 tools/services are my top pics for PR work.
Twitter is a real-time social networking tool that allows you to post updates, quotes, and links in 140 characters. This is a helpful for PR practitioners for promotion, product updates, reviews, linking your public to anything involving your client and is your best bet for a quick PR power play. Twitter is fully accessible to mobile phones and can be one of the most immediate platforms for your publics. People can “follow” your twitter feed, which makes your updates appear on their homepage.
Although Facebook is generally associated with the younger set of High School/College Students, more businesses are beginning to use this form of mass social media to communicate their ideas, events and products. Facebook is universal and easy to locate people or companies by name and also is a platform that gives a live feed directly to a person’s homepage, much like twitter. Facebook is an efficient way to introduce a company, product or idea to a large amount of people. Advertisements can be purchased as well to appear on facebook’s homepage.
DIGG
Digg.com is a social news website that allows you to not only keep up with the most popular stories posted, but to submit links and stories for others to view. A special concept to this website is posts are voted upon, and only the most “Dugg” stories appear on the homepage. Submitting stories or links pertinent to your clientele is important and Digg.com is a nice venue to reach a large audience, especially if they are “Dugg”.
GOOGLEREADER
Googlereader is my preferred aggregator for RSS feeds, it’s simple and easy to use. In the realm of PR you have to pay close attention to the media and trends in media. RSS feeds allow you to follow a number of websites to ensure you catch important updates or new posts. It allows you to stay current and informed and manage your preferred sites or clients easily.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
SEO allows you to search specifically for when your client or public appears on the internet. This will be useful not only to keep up with demographics and ideas of your public, but will help PR professionals handle crises better. To know where and when your client is mentioned will help to successfully manage their campaign.
