Each lesson includes a practical assignment which is based on the real world of social media marketing. All assignments are personally marked and graded by your tutor, so you’ll be receiving expert feedback from a social media marketing specialist at each stage of the course.
Social media as a way of signposting
Most of the organisations that a PR professional is likely to represent have a website. This ought to be the main place where content about the organisation is hosted.
One limitation to social media at present is the lack of ability to easily share information across all platforms.
Therefore, to maintain up to date and relevant content on each different social media site will take time and is resource intensive. One option is to use social media to signpost.
Signposting means pointing users / people to material elsewhere, preferably the organisation’s main website. For example, a short message on Twitter would contain a link to your organisation’s website.
This means there is just a single home page to maintain, update and keep fresh. The organisation’s use of social media is then used to drive traffic to that site, rather than having to replicate content on numerous platforms.
Social media as a way of engaging
Many PR professionals will be keen to get customers/users/the general public talking about the organisation they represent, or its products or services. This could be achieved by allowing users to post comments, if the particular social media platform allows it (Facebook and YouTube both do).
Businesses can post replies and try and encourage further discussion.
Twitter can be used to encourage conversation. Your organisation’s users or customers could be invited to send public and private messages via the site. Social media experts suggest an organisation should be represented by a named person on Twitter, as users tend to feel more comfortable messaging a person than they do a faceless organisation.
Several organisations are already successfully using Twitter as an extension to their customer services operation. They allow customers to post questions and make complaints via the site.
Twitter also uses a tagging system called hashtags. Tweets can feature a hashtag: usually a word preceded by the # symbol.
This is useful when searching for tweets about the organisation you represent. In Twitter parlance, multiple references to the same hashtag are said to be “trending”.
Evaluating social media performance
You should treat social media as any other channel and apply your monitoring and evaluation techniques in the same way as you would for any communication activity.
There are many tools available to help you track what is being said about any organisation you might represent. Some are free. Others, with extensive features, usually have to be paid for.
They will be able to help you track the reach of your messages via social media, give an indication of sentiment and make a judgement about impact.
See our social media marketing course