PR Principles for Small Businesses: Blogging Pt. 3

A company wanting to engage in public relations practices will use a blog as a way to engage clients.  This is the main aspect of using a blog for public relations purposes and has many different modes.  A company can use the blog to simply harbor conversation (something we covered in depth last week when we talked about community management).  A company can also use the blog to post new information about company changes or new products.  This can come in the form of a press release or in-depth article lining out specific outcomes, plans, and product specifications.  Blogs can also be used as an opinion research tool, using the companies followers to determine areas of improvement and potential growth.

 

 

PR Principles for Small Businesses: Community Management done right for PR

How proper Community Management builds a company’s PR

Obviously simply having a face within a company’s community will build positive PR, but there is more than that.  When people see an active community they know that the company is personable.  People relate an active community to an educated and respectable business.  They are able to see that being involved with a company that has an active community will have strong customer service as well.  Having strong community management gives a positive face to a company that would have little to no face if they had no community or a despondent community.

This is just the beginning of what community management can do for a company.  If you have other thoughts or questions on community management please leave them in the comments below!

PR Principles for Small Businesses: How to handle Community Management Pt 2

How to handle Community Management (Pt. 2)

Another key is to make sure that every part of the company is on the same page when it comes to the content it wants to post and have conversations about.  This will avoid any confusion down the road.  Finally do not wait for conversation to come to the company, go out and engage people in conversation.  This is not a place where no news is good news, an active community is good news.  Having an active community shows people joining the community multiple things that relate to the public relations part of the business.

 

 

PR Principles for Small Businesses: How to handle Community Management Pt 1

How to handle Community Management (Pt. 1)

This seems like a simple thing to do, it has management in the title so just get someone to manage the community right?  The issue is that we aren’t simply managing conversation at this point.  We are engaging and creating conversation.  So community management can be designated to one person or multiple people but the key is to keep the conversation flowing.  Good community management has people interacting on a weekly basis.  It’s not about the quantity of people coming to the community but the quality of the conversation.  The better quality conversation the more likely community members are to stick around.

 

PR Principles for Small Businesses: What is Community Management?

What is Community Management?

From a public relations and marketing perspective, managing a community is simply interacting with people.  This entails being online and ready for anything that could happen.  Typically managing a community involves keeping social media sites and blogs updated about what is happening with the company.  Answering questions posed by community members is a regular occurrence as well. This can also involve thinking of creative ways to get community members to engage the company in conversation.  The key to remember is that there is never a time where a company can take a break from community management.  The internet is a 24/7 job.

 

Reflections on Chapters 15-16 for “Putting the PR back in Public Relations”

Chapter 15

This deals specifically with the role of the Community Manager.  This is actually a field that I already work in.  It’s interesting to read about how the book views my profession and how they scope out what the future is like for it.  The best part for me was reading the last section where it talks specifically about what I do in Social Media.  I am contract labor for companies who don’t have the time or want to just pawn off their online community to me.  It is a very lucrative job currently and opens the door for many more professional level positions that previously did not exist.

Chapter 16

This has such great information for even PR people.  We are the customer.  We need to look at things from a customers perspective.  We need to realize that sure it may look good on the books, but is it something we would really buy into? If we ourselves don’t believe in it then how could the consumer believe in it?  I also enjoyed the Case study on Freshbooks, this is a company that I use as someone in the online industry and it’s good to know that I am working with a company that “gets it” when it comes to social media.