7 PR and Social Media Habits to Leave Behind in 2016

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December 21, 2016

As we wrap up a surreal year, we gladly say good-bye to the low points and set our sights on resolutions and hopes for the new year. It’s not our place to tell you to add burpees to your fitness routines or do more charity work, but we will definitely be back to share some ideas on how to get your content seen in 2017. But before we talk about what to add, here are our recommendations on the PR and social media habits to leave behind in 2016.

  1. Ignoring the numbers. We live in a big data world. There is no excuse not to measure your results anymore. It doesn’t take an expensive license with Radian6 to gather some intelligence. Every platform has some analytics baked in. Look at them!
  2. Business speak. Corporatese doesn’t make you sound smart. No more soft sounding, circling back or covering off on ideas. Let me peel back the onion and breadcrumb it for you. We are in the communications industry. I don’t care how many moving parts your tiger team is managing, stop drinking the kool aid, get out of that damn box, and stay in your swim lane. Dropping pronouns doesn’t move the needle. It’s time to pivot away from lazy language.
  3. Bulletin boarding. Posting only about your company, your product, your product features, your executives, is boring, and tone deaf, and low impact. Pledge to connect with people and promote other ideas and brands in 2017.
  4. Thank you auto-DMs. No one appreciates the “Thanks for following me” message. No one.
  5. Sending “Did you get my message?” messages. This habit should have died in 1989. It’s not too late.
  6. Ignoring podcasts. All the cool kids have them. We do! Plus, podcast listening grew 23 percent between 2015 and 2016 according to Edison Research. You will need a podcasting strategy for 2017.
  7. Manual management. Surely you’ve set goals for using social media. It’s really difficult to meet those goals if you are managing all of your content manually. We’re not advocating you become a spam factory in 2017, but do invest in a few tools to automate some of your social media.

#dontletthedoorhityou2016!

#getyourcontentseenin2017!