Social PR Tips to Get Fit for 2013 Digital Marketing

If you’re in the digital marketing world you know the keyword drill – visual, social, mobile, local, and content marketing. They’re the vitamins, nutrients, cardio, weightlifting and supplements that brands need to stay healthy, vital, and in shape.

2013 marks the year fit brands of all sizes can win the war against the competition and the race to gain or maintain a customer relationship.

The gimmicky yo-yo-SEO days are over – that was so last decade. Today’s healthy brands are doing press releases because they’re newsworthy, attracting links as a result of good content, and collaborating between all departments, including creative, public relations, digital marketing, advertising, and customer service.

Build a Community, Think Different

The traditional business model is changing thanks to social media communities and social conversations. Digital marketing experts report that the majority of a company’s sales cycle today happens without a company’s participation; brands and agencies that “get it” will survive.

“Small businesses all the way to the enterprise level should think entrepreneurial,” Copyblogger CEO Brian Clark shared at BlueGlassX 2012. “In order to appear on the customer’s radar early and expand marketshare, brands must shift the mindset to become media producers and think like an editorial team whether it is content, social or search.”

So how do you create a relationship with your audience before the sales cycle starts? Digital marketers chimed in offering tips on how smart brands can gain market share (and muscle share) by leveraging the best practices of content marketing and thinking like a media company.

Social PR DosFind ways to get in the social and mobile newsfeed. More organic visibility equals more publicity. “If you want to grow your social presence, and right now let's admit that means Facebook, you have to find ways to get around the limits that Facebook is putting on organic visibility for your posts. Sure you can pay to show up in your fans’ newsfeeds, but you have to get creative to show up to a large percentage of your fans without paying. Right now that means images!” said Rob Woods, director of marketing, Reinvent.Go visual by using pictures your audience can identify with! But they don't need to be, and in most cases shouldn't be, directly related to your brand. Woods offers this tip: Make the images 403 pixels wide by 271 pixels high. That's the best size to look great on the web and on mobile.Dial into local mobile search. “The biggest under the radar opportunity for local brands in 2013 is the explosion happening right now in local mobile search. Smartphones are now the fastest spreading technology in human history, and – as Mary Meeker just reported – 13 percent of all Internet traffic now comes from a mobile device, up from 4 percent just two years ago,” said John Denny, VP Marketing, Advance Digital.Encourage users to “Google” your brand to find you rather than typing in your domain directly. “You still get the visit, but in addition to the visit you are getting a powerful signal to Google that you should rank for terms related to your brand, and you are teaching users to repeat that searching behavior,” Woods said.Think like a magazine. Smart brands will have a chief content officer charged with an agile content marketing plan that includes an editorial calendar, non-promotional types of content, strong visuals, email marketing, and offline advertising.Utilize paid search for positive and negative public relations. Remember that what people are talking about drives search trends on a daily basis. Janel Landis Laravie Founder, Chacka Marketing, offers this social PR tip: Everyone knows that they need to incorporate special offers and promos into their paid search campaigns, but don’t forget about positive and negative PR. If you are in the spotlight for good or bad reasons, utilize paid search to make your response the first result searchers are seeing on the results page and drive traffic to a dedicated page or blog post about it. Bidding on related terms to a recall or a community event will also let you assess just how big of a deal the subject is to your customers, because you will see how many impressions and clicks there actually were on the related keywords.

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