Public Relations (PR) has been a real estate marketing idea that brick and mortar businesses have used for hundreds of years. Today, with Web 2.0, press relations is not just about reaching out to traditional media (T.V., radio, newspapers & magazines), but also to the modern day influencers; Bloggers, Twitterers and Facebookers.
The difference between traditional media influencers and the Web 2.0 public relations influencers of today – Bloggers, Twitterers and Facebookers – are not generally paid professionals. Today’s public relations influencers are people who do what they do because they love it, not because it’s a job.
Getting your message and press releases out to these people is the primary goal of public relations. Getting reproduced on ‘this’ website or ‘that’ blog increases the potential for your message to go ‘viral’. And online, a reprinted (or reposted) press release can get a huge number of views that drive traffic directly back to your website.
Where are these people online?
- Websites/Blogs – news, industry, topic related, review, video sharing and photo sharing
- Forums – Industry message and topic-related
- Social Networking – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
- Social Media bookmarking sites – Digg, Delicious, and so on
- How do you find these people?
- Enter keywords into the search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo
- Search for industry related blogs, forums, facebook pages, social networking groups
- Search for industry related websites in social bookmarking sites – Digg, Delicious, etc.
- Find out who is talking about your company or brand through Social Media Search –
- Cotweet.com, Hootsuite.com, Icerocket.com, Socialmention.com, Trackur.com, etc.
How do you contact these people?
- Email – the best way to reach most online professionals
- Instant messaging – maybe not the best way to approach for initial contact, but a great way to work a continuing conversation with a busy online writer
- Blog comments – leave a public comment on an existing blog post
- Twitter – try the private tweet, tweet your initial contact
- Facebook – send private message, facebook email or online chat
- Linkedin – private messaging
The goal is to build give-and-take relationships with these public relations influencers. Introduce yourself and ask the question – what can I do to help you promote your business? At that point the relationship becomes a win-win situation.
From Blogs to Twitter feeds to Facebook posts, public relations influencers are always looking for interesting news and information to post about. It’s a good real estate marketing idea to provide something for these people to share…send a link to the ‘media room’ at your website where you provide digital photos, backgrounds.