If you have been reading the newspapers, blogs or the newly released Huffington Post UK over the last week, you will have noticed two major breaking stories unravelling before your eyes, one involving the News of the World’s on-going PR nightmare and the other involving the new social network on the block, Google+.
While the problems at the News of the World may be considered ever so slightly more than a PR nightmare, these two breaking stories have pushed the symbiotic relationship between social media and PR into sharp focus. Social media offers the public a platform to either sing your company’s praises or start an unshakable movement against you and as a result, having a coherent social media strategy in your PR plan has become more vital than ever.
The arrival of the new social media platform, Google+, means that the public now has yet another outlet for their thoughts, opinions and movements, and when you add the influence of Google to the existing social superpowers of Facebook and Twitter, it has now become impossible to ignore what is occurring in the networks.
So if you’re just starting to put together a social PR strategy, what are the basic areas that you should cover?
Reactive
Your reactive social PR strategy concerns your voice on the network and your company’s presence on the main social platforms. Learn, use and research all of the main protagonists (Facebook, Twitter and soon, Google+) and see which are the most appropriate outlets for your business. How will you know this? Find where your customer base hangs out and make sure you have a presence there.
The general rule is that Facebook is the natural home for B2C businesses, LinkedIn is the place for B2B and Twitter can be used for both, but in reality this will vary between sectors and industries. Google+ are urging businesses to hold off building company pages on the new network as they are set to release something big for corporate pages, so watch this space to see what they unveil.
Use your social networks as a place to interact with your customers, give exclusive offers and build a base of loyal fans. It is this community element that makes social networks so powerful when building a brand identity and it can help your customers stay loyal to your brand.
What is the biggest mistake? Building your Twitter profile and Facebook page and forgetting about it. If people find it and reach out to you through these platforms then it doesn’t look great and almost suggests you are ignoring them. If you’re not committed to maintaining your social presence, it could be better not to have one at all.
Proactive
Being proactive on social networks involves monitoring what other people are saying about your brand online and joining in the conversation. It could be good, bad or indifferent but by monitoring what people are saying about you, it gives you the chance to put out any fires before they really take hold.
Google Alerts are a good way of monitoring mentions of your company on the web, and Bing’s Social Search returns real time search results of what people are Tweeting and posting about. Unfortunately, a lot of the time people are more likely to tell their Twitter followers about problems they have had with your company before they tell you, so if you approach someone about rectifying the situation before they complain to you, you are making a public display of high levels of customer service. This is just one simple way that by being proactive with social networks, you can improve levels of customer service quickly and easily.
You can also use social platforms to network with influential people in your niche. Comment on posts they make, re-tweet them and use it as a way to get on talking terms with influential people who normally wouldn’t reply to your emails or phone calls. People are also finding that journalists are far more receptive to tweets than emails, so if you’ve got a story to tell, get tweeting them!
The main thing to remember is that social media isn’t a one-size-fits-all PR solution; it is like a toolbox from which you have to select the best tool for the job. Out of every business application, social media lends itself far more to PR than any other area of a company, so get stuck in, find your customers and influencers and connect with them in a whole new way.

Author Bio
Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer in the business gifts sector and manages SEO for The Corporate Gifts Company. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department. Follow him @alanjgrainger.