A Social Media Publicist creates online content in the form of posts, blogs and email texts. Copy writting for the internet has its nuances and a Social Media Publicist will know how to write headlines, slogans and introductions for captivating an audience to “tune-in”…or as the Internet knows it… “click-through”. While Broadcast Media calls it “tune-in” marketing, it’s the same thing as “click-through” marketing, because the messaging must cause the audience (aka the Online Community) to take action. Most commonly the behavior is to find out more by changing web pages, and just like changing a television channel…clicking on link is an active choice.
Prior to being a Social Media Publicist, I spent 19 years in Broadcast Television working with networks like CNN. My job was to entice, attract and motivate the “viewer” to watch the channel…or as we called it “tune-in”. News media also calls this the “hook” or the “tease”, and of course there is the “lead-in” story. The same kind of captions used for news stories are what internet postings should be, because motivating the online viewer to “click here” requires the same kind of influence as a commercial to watch a television channel does.
However, while the same messaging may work for both broadcast and internet marketing, the difference is that internet posts compete with millions of other posts per day, multiple internet news feeds, and social sites. There is much more competition for viewers online then there is over the air or on cable. Messaging also requires “TWITTERFICATION”…a web phenominom influenced by Twitter.com. When you “TWITTERFY” a message it means to shorten the text and include keyword rich copy so your message catches viewers and search engine crawlers looking for keywords.
While a Social Media Publicist has to be cleaver and engaging, it’s also helpful to have a background in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Keyword Analytic to be successful. Most importantly, a publicist must understand the human and business interests wrapped around the topic. Knowing peoples interest and how to capture them is what matters in writing the post, but a business must also supplement the great Headline with frequent posts to make a impact.
Just like with traditional broadcast marketing, a business will not be found unless their ad is seen online when the viewer is online. Just like running the right media ad flight, you must run the right posting campaign. Frequency, placement, and reach matter to online posting, and if you are a business actively posting you’ll need to post often and at high traffic times to effectively reach your audience. A Social Media Publicists knows when, where and how to make a post work for your business and can be a valuable tool in your marketing kit. While a good publicist has a price tag, posting does not have a direct cost and it’s success is traceable and monetized through analytics provided by the Publicist. Entry level cost of a basic posting package is as little as $150 per month for up to 10 posts per week.