Michael Brito, who works as a social media strategist at Intel, has written a great post on Britopian.com. The post makes some excellent points about what makes a genuine social media expert and what doesn't. What I particularly liked to see though was his common sense advice in the very first paragraph:
"Sorry, but you aren't a social media expert until you fail... and you can’t fail until you measure; and you can’t measure until you execute; and you can’t execute until you plan; and you can’t plan until you have a strategy."
This is the same advice that Metrica has been offering our media evaluation clients for the last 15 years, neatly mirroring our PR strategy, planning, implementation, and measurement cycle.
When commencing a PR campaign, we advise that you should begin at the end - to think about what it is you will be wanting to measure once the campaign is over. This will make you think about what it is you are trying to achieve and therefore what your objectives are. When the objectives are clear, the strategy can be created and the PR implementation planned. Once implemented, the campaign should be measured (ideally not just with media analysis but other metrics too) and then this information should be fed back into the beginning of the process from where it should drive further PR planning.
For some PR practitioners social media is a new frontier, others are already very experienced in the field. But the important thing to bear in mind is that the core fundamentals from a strategic point of view are no different from traditional PR or, for that matter, any marketing campaign. Think strategy, plan, implement, measure and you wont go too far wrong. And by doing that, you will also be going a long way to proving your public relations success and justifying your PR budget.
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