Laying the marketing foundation for a SaaS brand is no easy task. It takes hard work, strategy and a methodical touch to create a business that not only provides a good solution to customers but is a respected source of knowledge in the marketplace. While this takes time — read: years — strategies like social media and media relations are key to taking your brand from an idea to an industry name.
You might ask why I liken tweets to media placements. At first, these two things might not seem similar, but I can tell you that there’s a method to my madness and social media and media relations have more in common than you might think.
Read on for my reasoning.
Point 1: Use them to pass the “sniff test”
At BLASTmedia, we recognize four key stakeholder groups that an organization needs to consider depending on the stage of its business: investors, current and potential employees, partners and customers. At some point, each of these stakeholder groups will likely look to verify the legitimacy of a company. Stakeholders look at social media activity and articles secured via media relations to get a better sense of the company.
So, when investors, employees, partners and customers look at your social media accounts, what do they see? Is your organization posting on a consistent basis? What kind of content are you posting? Simply promotional pieces or are you including other strong pieces about the industry?
What about when stakeholders search for your brand name? In a simple news search of your organization’s name, earned media placements can set you ahead of competitors. And, not having any earned placements when someone searches for your brand? It’s on par with not having a Twitter account with only year-old-tweets. In other words, you have to consider the cost of not having an active media relations strategy. Are you prepared for your competitors to own the conversation?
A consistent social presence and an arsenal of earned media placements will tell stakeholders that your organization is legitimate. This leads me to my next point.
Point 2: Going off the grid raises red flags
As a smart marketer, you’d never completely stop posting to your social channels. If you did, you know that would make your organization look inept from an outsider’s perspective. Where did the industry expertise go?
The same goes for media relations efforts. A steady cadence of thought leadership placements followed by a gap in coverage could raise red flags to stakeholders, ultimately making them question what might be going on internally and why a once active organization is now silent.
Point 3: You get out what you get in
Like a gym membership, when it comes to social media or media relations, you get out what you put in. When you take time to craft a thoughtful social content strategy and engage with users, it’s likely that your account will be looked to as a resource for industry information, commentary or insights about your product.
It’s the same with media relations. Yes, nearly anyone can do simple public relations tactics — create a press release, share it on a wire service, like Business Wire, send out cold emails to a few journalists hoping you get some traction — and call it a media relations strategy. But, if you go deeper than that — providing commentary, industry insights and sometimes even information about how to best use your product — you can create a brand presence and position your organization as a thought leader.
When you create thoughtful strategies and put time into both social media and media relations, you maximize results creating a strong, foundational presence for your brand.
Laying the foundation of your brand’s presence takes time. You want to show investors, clients, employees and partners that your company is an expert in the marketplace that can be trusted to deliver best practices and forward-thinking commentary. With thoughtful media relations and social media strategy, both are possible. To discuss how media relations can create a solid foundation for your brand, contact Lindsey Groepper.
