Devising a Social Media Strategy to Support a Digital PR Campaign

Executing an effective digital PR campaign can take weeks, sometimes even months of careful planning. From creative brainstorms to find the perfect angle, analysing different data sources, prospecting and writing an attention-grabbing story, there are multiple tasks involved. 

But have you considered how your social strategy can support and amplify the success of your digital PR campaign? Don’t let it be an afterthought…

Check out our top tips on what to do on social before, during and after your campaign to get the best results. 

Before the campaign launch…

Begin ‘warming up’ your targets 

Identify 5-10 key targets, be that journalists or bloggers who you really want to cover the story. 

Then 3-4 weeks before, begin engaging with them organically on Twitter, liking and replying to Tweets that are relevant to the client and/or story that you are planning to pitch. 

Set up social listening to track keywords and conversations around your story 

• Set up a social listening track for relevant related keywords and campaign hashtags to identify and track conversations around the release and find any coverage from journalists.
• This will help you to be reactive in replying and engaging with the conversations and following up with any journalists who cover the story
• You can also use social listening to identify relevant influencers and journalists with which to engage and potentially seed content with.

Social post creation 

Once you have crafted your super snappy, headline-grabbing story and written it up into a press release, it’s time to get your social specs on. What are the key points or insights and how can they be leveraged on social media to promote the story? 

Pick out 3-4 key facts, figures or statistics to lead each post and schedule them strategically around the time of launch. Think about supporting creatives such as branded graphs, infographics, or short video clips.

After you have launched the campaign…

Organic Social Publishing

• Once you have launched the campaign and sent out your press release to journalists, post the release on all your social media channels, linking to the report or blog piece about the report.
• Ensure you lead with a catchy/interesting fact from the report to boost engagement and encourage users to click through. Include ideally an infographic creative displaying a key figure.
• Include a creative trackable hashtag for the report and include in the posts. This could also be included in the release note, depending on the tone of the release and preference of your PR agency, (if you are using one). 
• Send out internal communications to staff, encouraging them to read, share and add a comment to help further leverage the news 

Tip: Ensure that all social promotion is scheduled for after the campaign has launched. If journalists have seen that the story has already ‘broken’ on social media, they may be more reluctant to pick it up. 

Monitor, Amplify and Follow Up

• Review the track you set up before the campaign to monitor brand mentions, hashtags and conversations around the release. 
• Be proactive in responding to questions about the release or engaging with journalists and publications who pick it up via social. 
• Share any coverage you receive by retweeting or reposting (depending on the channel) and follow up with any journalists who have covered your release without including a backlink. Sometimes a subtle nudge is all it takes to get that valuable link!