Five Tips for Social Media Messaging

by Stephen Abbott
Principal, Abbott Public Relations

1. Use Keywords. Identify keywords that you will include in your posting or tweet that will help relevant publics find you and absorb your message. For the most part, this will be easy to do, but doing a little research may pay off – by getting you more hits. Use "search" in twitter to discover if these words are being discussed, including the tenses of those words (i.e. past tense, present tense.)

2. Be Relevant. Write about something your readers will find relevant and interesting. If I don't care about what you’re writing about, I won’t read it. It’s as simple as that. Relevancy within your profession is easy to find. What is going on that people can relate to, understand and gain relevance from?

3. Tie into Trends. What’s going on right now that has relevance to you and your business? My profession, public relations, can be tied into many trends on twitter. For example, when ex-House Majority Leader Tom Delay was sentenced to 3 years in prison, it was a top trend. I tweeted about how PR cannot help someone if they aren’t repentant. It’s not a cure-all, and used the trending phrase “ex-House Majority Leader Tom Delay” in the tweet.

4. Be Timely. Not all postings will be about an event, or trying to tie into trends, but as in writing news releases, timeliness may be vitally important to making your tweet or posting relevant. If your posting and tweeting about something that’s months out-of-date, chances are you'll be seen as out-of-date and even out of step. If it’s not in the news RIGHT NOW, especially on twitter, it’s not something about which you should be commenting.

5. Don’t Stop. Some companies 'try' social media and then stop tweeting and posting for 6 months, a year, or never come back. That’s a waste and risks losing the momentum they built up by engaging with others in the first place – not to mention losing the goodwill they earned by engaging with their customers! (And by the way, that’s what it's all about – being social.) Keep to a regular schedule, and assign a person or team to continue tweeting, posting on Facebook and blogging as close to daily as possible.

Ask Abbott Public Relations how we can be your social media content providers. For as low as $50/month, we can get your small business or organization into various social media environments. For more information, visit http://www.abbottpr.com