The flirting phase is over. It’s time for healthcare public relations and social media to tie the knot. If you’re not sharing PR content on social media and using social media to inform your PR campaigns, you’re doing it wrong – Good PR gets amplified dramatically by using social media channels. And monitoring of social media for potential PR gold AND problems is critical these days.
Here are a few tips to get your public relations and social media efforts working in harmony.
- Monitor what’s trending in your social media feeds and create public relations material based on those trends. Concerns about the bird flu flooding Twitter and Facebook and you just happen to have an avian flu virus test kit in your product line-up? That PR campaign practically writes itself!
- Use social media analytics to create and drive PR campaigns. If your new malaria test kit is getting lots of attention in your Twitter feed, it’s a good place to start when planning your next PR assault.
- Use social media to micro-target the audience for a PR campaign. In addition to reaching out to journalists covering the healthcare industry, go after those bloggers, bloggers, and key influencers who can spread the word about your latest innovative medical device. And guest blogging can be a great way to get your content in front of fresh eyeballs.
- Take advantage of live video streams like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Periscope to showcase PR events. Want to see how our latest Femto laser works? Check out our live feed as we demo it!
- Monitor social media feeds for potential PR problems and nip them in the bud before they become overblown. Someone complaining on Facebook about an outcome from his or her laser eye surgery? Get to the bottom of the matter in a direct and professional way to resolve the issue before it becomes a bigger headache.
- When a media outlet picks up your news release or pitch, use it abundantly and often in your social media channels. You’re not just spreading your company’s news, but channeling eyeballs back to the outlet that ran your story—something they always appreciate. And be sure to tag the outlet so they can also re-tweet and share with wild abandon.
- Check out a site like MedGadget.com, if you don’t have the time and resources to pitch a news release to individual outlets. For a price, they’ll post your news release to their site, and while the PR value may be limited, it can provide you with a backlink to your own website and potentially boost your SEO.
- Our public relations and social media teams work hand-in-surgical-glove and have seen the impact of using them in concert to increase the effectiveness of both exponentially. Let us know how we can put our expertise to work for you.