Using Social Media for PR

 There are probably many different ways to use social media for public relations depending upon the type of business you are promoting.  Mashable.com recently ran an article showing what they considered some smart ways that different companies are doing this.  Since it's always instructive to see how others are doing it, let's take a closer look at these examples.

For the Rayovac snowball fight, yes it's a cute idea but perhaps too cute?  Would you have participated?  I know I wouldn't  have.  But it was effective!

In these days of tight budgets and rising food costs, the Healthy Choice campaign seems like a good one, but only if you are a coupon person.  I have tried to be in the past but the coupons never made it to the store until they were expired.  But this effort did have a demonstrable effect in gaining new fans for the FB page.


 The Breeders Cup campaign also successful but it looks as if they needed a whole army of people to pull it off.  The Balsams Resort campaign takes a page from my buddy Chad Sorg and his Artist Fishbowl project where he would live a week at a time in different storefront windows in Reno and LA.  You were ahead of your time Sorg!  The KFC scholarship campaign got turned on it's head with substituting a single tweet for a long essay.

In looking at these, you'll notice that they are all corporations using agencies.  How can the smaller business or nonprofit benefit from these examples?  I think the answer is by thinking out of the box.   If your nonprofit is planning a benefit, maybe taking a cue from some of these examples to use either FB or Twitter to not only publicize the event, but perhaps give away free tickets to the event.

Media vs. Bloggers

A big shout out to my friend Chad Sorg of Artist Fishbowl fame who inspired this week's post on PR Insights.  In my other life as a visual artist, we both belong to an artist's group in Reno that holds an annual art festival - Nada Dada Motel - where artist rent rooms in low end motels to show their work.  I became involved with the group about three years ago and helped with the PR which ended up with the NY Times covering the event two years ago.

OK, enough back story, here's the meat of the message - that approaching bloggers is very different than sending out news releases to media.  Since much of PR is luck and timing, I'd have to say that I agree with PressKing.com with most of its advice. 

But from personal experience working with a client who had developed a new toy for toddlers and was taking it to a showcase, I'd have to say that I did the regular "hack" job for her - that is sending out a regular release to bloggers and did get plenty of response and offers to do stories on her and her product. 

However this is just one incidence.  Actually the hardest part of the aforementioned project was to research and develop a list of bloggers who would have an interest in the story.  Although I do agree totally about not being a nag when following up after sending out a pitch!