Traditionally, brands have been known to connect with their target audience through PR campaigns in newspapers, TV and blogs. But with the advent of social media, many publishers have built a large following by distributing their content to various platforms.
Local media outlets, in particular, have been able to tap into this trend to reach niche communities on social media and build a more engaged followership. This has given local media the opportunity to offer PR and advertising services to brands on their social platforms.
In this article, we’ll dive into the benefits of putting your brand on the social media platforms of media outlets and share some tips on how to get your brands on these platforms.
First, let’s take a look at the benefits
- Large and engaged audience: Media outlets typically have large and engaged social media followers, most of whom will see your ads.
- Custom targeting options: Media outlets can provide custom targeting options, ensuring that your product or service is only shown to people likely to be interested in it. Industry-specific media outlets also come to play here, as you can streamline your campaign for certain industries and demographics.
- Credibility and trust: When you place ads on a media outlet’s social channels, you benefit from the credibility and trust it has built with its audience. Consequently, you build credibility and trust with your target audience.
Having reviewed the benefits mentioned above, the first step to take, should you decide to run a campaign on these platforms, is to research and define your goals. It is impractical to approach a media outlet without well-researched and clearly defined goals. This helps you determine the outlet’s social presence, discover what social content it accepts, manage your campaign expectations, and ultimately, set aside an ad-placement budget.
It would also help to work closely with the outlet to select the advertising products that make it to its social channel. This is important because these outlets have guidelines on the content they feature, and, to a large extent, their experiences with their audience put them in the best position to know what they are likely to engage with.
Now here are the strategies you can follow to get social media PR for your brand:
Share original content
Sharing original content with media outlets is one excellent way to increase visibility and engagement for your brand. Sometimes, by a stroke of luck, some companies’ content is reshared on media handles. At other times, it is reshared because the original stories are so good that media companies do not want to pass up the opportunity to put them on their handles which includes social media. However, this only happens when the stories are told from insightful perspectives.
A good strategy is interesting blog posts, thought leadership pieces, or industry-relevant infographics. These can help the media find your original story interesting enough to feature or reshare on their social media handles, ultimately validating your company.
Collaborate through sponsored posts
Sponsored posts are paid avenues that allow you to put your content on a media outlet’s social media channels, including blogs and newsletters.
With sponsored posts, you can craft your content to your pleasing, which isn’t guaranteed when your content is shared by the media organically. However, in doing this, ensure that your content still resonates with the audience of that media outlet and the social media platform you are targeting.
Techpoint Africa offers sponsored post slots on its social media and website. Companies like Patricia have previously leveraged sponsored posts on Techpoint Africa to announce new products and drive thought leadership in its industry.
Events partnership
Another route to get PR for your brand through the social channels of media outlets is to partner with them through event sponsorship. Event partnerships allow you to put your product in front of your target audience organically.
In this case, the media outlet will make announcements and post content from the event on their social media channels. Certain partnership terms provide for live streaming of events on platforms such as YouTube. Depending on the event partnership agreement, your content can feature on the social channels of the media outlet before, during, and after the event.
You can also run campaigns that include various call-to-actions through event partnerships. GIG Mobility (GIGM), for instance, partnered with Techpoint Africa to increase awareness for its maiden Africa Mobility Conference. Techpoint Africa utilised its social media channels to increase publicity and registration for the event, which was precisely GIGM’s goal.
Conclusion
After getting your brand’s content on a media outlet’s social channels, you can maximise its impact by sharing it on your platforms, including your social media channels. This will further increase awareness and drive traffic and engagement to your brand.
While social media is the world’s melting pot, media outlets use other channels — newsletters, podcasts, and websites — to reach people. It would, therefore, be wise to consider these other channels as you build your strategy to reach media audiences.
To advertise on Techpoint Africa’s social media channels or make more enquiries, contact business@techpoint.africa.
