Social Media Tools and PR

<p>Social media tools are crucial for PR firms to provide a fast, cost effective form of promotion. How to get started building online strategies? We've previously talked about listening, but worth repeating, to start there:</p> <ul> <li>Listening - <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.filtrbox.com">Filtrbox</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/reader">Google Reader</a> (for blogs) help monitor the conversations circling their industry and the agency itself. Setting up search terms and reviewing them frequently can keep you informed and manage communications crisis quickly. Set up accounts and start listening. </li> <li>Contributing - to blogs, and responding to LinkedIn Q&A's and news articles promote thought leadership. </li> <li>Publication - Tell your story. Create great content; publish releases, case studies and stories to the web via the wire and RSS feeds. One of our releases had 2900 hits on the feeds (as reported by <a href="http://www.postzinger.com">Post Zinger</a>). Online presence increases by <a href="http://delicious.com/help/faq#tags">tagging</a> articles on <a href="http://digg.com/">Digg</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://delicious.com/">Delicous</a> and other sites. </li> </ul> <p>Social media tools used to promote consistent, quality messaging are supplements to traditional PR methods. Excellent branding, positioning, writing and most important actual relationships with key influencers are still critical to brands growth.</p>