How to Have an Effective Social Media Presence?

Social media! Well, hasn't our world been revolving around that for quite sometime? Being a potential PR practitioner I must agree with the fact that social media is the reigning queen of the digital age, and its time to embrace the power she wields over technology at large. 

When it comes down to using social media to your best advantage, we need to call in the experts. Kelly Lux, director of social media at Syracuse University iSchool, shared her expertise on how to use social media wisely. It made me revamp my twitter account immediately, and yes, my tweets did receive a bit more attention after that. So I thought that it would be unfair to you if I did not share these easy and effective tips that she passed on.

So here are 5 quick tips that would take you closer to conquering the world through social media, well, at least the world of PR.

1. Relate to your audience – Post things that your audience would enjoy or find interesting rather than retweeting or reposting the same thing over and over. Be more conversational and save the formality for later.
   
   
2. Use visual elements – Sadly, people still judge a book by its cover. So spruce up your Facebook posts, tweets and blogs by adding some high resolution pictures and fancy videos.
   
   
3. Build relations – Public relations is all about building relationships with people who can help you tell your story. Reach out to your audience and form a bond with them because loyalty is too scarce a commodity now.
   
   
4. Be quick to respond – Always respond as quick as you can, especially when you are amidst a crisis. Prolonging the wait will only makes things worse.
   
   
5. Use searchable key words – Though we all would like to sound smart through our posts or tweets, remember that it is important to use popular key words or existing hashtags that people frequently search for. It puts you on the map.

I hope that these five tactics added some value to you. But keep in mind that you have just taken baby steps towards building an effective social media presence and need to give it more time if you want to be dazzled by its awesome-ness!

Stay tuned for more!