Social media marketing is a term that describes the use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube and many more are being created every day. 

Social media for public relations has three important aspects:

1. Creating buzz or newsworthy events, videos, tweets, or blog entries that attract attention, and become viral in nature. Buzz is what makes social media public relations work. It replicates a message through user to user contact, rather than the traditional method of purchasing of an ad or promoting a press release. The message does not necessarily have to be about the product. Many successful viral campaigns have gathered steam through an amusing or compelling message, with the company logo or tagline included incidentally. One of the most popular campaigns was beer.com when they did their virtual bartender campaign.  Virtual Bartender was a beautiful blonde girl ready and waiting to respond to some pretty bizarre requests. On November 4, 2004 they sent out ten emails between 9pm  and midnight. This led to 75 sessions later that night, 15,000 the following day and then began to double, then triple. Beer.com became the most popular website in the world for the month of November 2004 and achieved more than 800% growth in traffic with more than 10,000,000 user sessions in only 28 days! – 7 minutes per session on average. They also signed up 205,000 people for the Virtual Bartender fan club and made the Media Metrix Top 400 list for the first time ever. The intent was to get 18-26 year olds to go to the site — and get advertisers to pay for placement there.

2. Building ways that enable fans of a brand or company to promote a message themselves in multiple online social media venues. Fan pages in Twitter, MySpace of Facebook follow this model. Almost every major corporation now does this and you can see some examples at http://www.facebook.com/sybase or http://www.facebook.com/HP.

3. It is based around online conversations. Social media marketing is not controlled by the organization. Instead it encourages user participation and dialogue. A badly designed social media marketing campaign can potentially backfire on the organization that created it. To be successful SMM campaigns must fully engage and respect the users. Avid video editing products does a great job of these with their community forums. http://community.avid.com/ . This not only provides them with information on problems with their current system, but it keeps their users engaged with them and they can also provide features for future updates to the software.

Social media is one element of the tools available for public relations professionals these days — but it is an important one when an online negative comment can devastate a company’s reputation in a matter of hours.

If you would like to learn how social media marketing can help you – give us a call at 303-246-0366.

Lets face it, the days of simply sending out a press release to the local newspapers, radio and TV are simply one component of Public Relations.

Welcome to the home of DenverPublicRelations.Net –  This is a collaborative effort by two agencies, with  Ayers Strategic Public Relations  teaming up with Sexton & Co. to bring greater public relations services to clients in the Denver, CO region.  This combination provides Ayers’ award winning public relations expertise with Sexton’s online technology solutions. Combined, these services provide truly integrated public relations services to clients seeking a blend of traditional public relations with the new media technologies.

Public relations is one of the most efficient and effective ways to accomplish dynamic business objectives. Our reputation is built on the development of sound strategic public relations campaigns to help companies build brand awareness, establish leadership, drive demand for products and services to increase market share, and weather even the stormiest crisis.

We are looking at achieving results which allow our clients to focus on their critical paths and achieve their business objectives. We immerse ourselves in our client’s business and are deeply passionate about their success. If you would like to learn more please call Jerry Sexton at 303-246-0366.