Public Relations and Crisis Management

These days, companies spend lot of time and money to entice customers to "follow" them on social media , but very often, they don't do enough to keep them engaged. The key to not only retaining, but also growing your customer base is engaging with the most active members of your social communities in order to transform them into brand advocates. Take the time to respond to comments and questions in a friendly and conversational tone to help spark engagement and dialogue. Additionally, actively responding to reviews, both positive and negative, can help show your appreciation and openness to feedback. Finally, rewarding your brand advocates is a great way to create positive word of mouth that will be shared with their family and friends.  For example: a beauty brand can surprise active followers with a free bottle of their yet-to-be released moisturizer and a card asking them to share their feedback with their brand's official hashtag. The customers...

Today, we would like to discuss a topic that seems to be the source of a lot of questions and confusion among both, many PR pos and their clients – what the social media release is and how it is different from the regular news release . Both the traditional news release and the social media release (SMR) serve a similar purpose – to share the latest news with company stakeholders - however, they do so in slightly different ways. The main difference between the two types of news releases is their target audience. Unlike the traditional news release, which is focused on conveying an announcement to reporters and news outlets, the SMR targets the end reader directly. Traditional news releases are typically written in a formal tone using the so-called inverted pyramid approach where the most important facts are laid out in the very first paragraph and additional details are provided in paragraphs below. This is done in order to make it easier for reporters to quickly absor...

Writing is a big part of the PR professional’s daily routine. Be it a new press release, blog post or marketing content, your writing needs to be informative, compelling and effective in conveying ideas. And while we all have different linguistic aesthetics and ways we express our thoughts, there are certain stylistic and compositional principles that are worth following when it comes to writing for PR. Here are three simple ways you can better adjust your writing to the PR style: 1. Base your writing on verbs and nouns rather than adjectives. One of the differences between editorial and PR writing is that the latter tends to be more direct and action-based. By reducing the amount of adjectives in favor of verbs and nouns, you will be able to make your  content  more dynamic and engaging to the reader. 2. Start by communicating your most important news/arguments in the beginning. PR style of writing aims at informing and engaging the audience in a concis...

Not so long ago, the # (hashtag) symbol didn’t mean much to most people. Today, however, both the term and the little symbol have managed to permeate nearly every aspect of our culture. Even though most business owners have heard of them, few actually know how to use hashtags effectively for their business. When used strategically, a hashtag can greatly amplify your company’s reach, customer engagement and increase brand awareness. Here are six tips that will help you harness the power of hashtags for your business: 1.     Use hashtags outside Twitter The hashtag symbol was brought to social media stardom by Twitter, where it was cleverly used to categorize tweets and link countless conversations together. Other social media platforms followed suit, and today, hashtags can be effectively utilized across a variety of networks, including Facebook , Google+ , Pinterest , Instagram and Tumblr. When engaging with your audience on social media, know which pl...