Early on a beautiful Friday morning in New York, iced coffee in hand, it takes a creative headline to catch my eye as I go through the tasks to finish up the work week.
This morning a headline from Ragan’s PR Daily newsletter did just that: “What ‘80s pop singer Rick Astley – the Rickroll guy – teaches us about social media.”
Did Ragan’s just give me a reason to listen to “Never Gonna Give You Up” at 9 a.m.? Why yes they did, but the blog post accompanying the video provided some interesting thoughts on the connection of the lyrics to the rules of social media. You can read the full post here: “Rick Astley & Social Media,” but the four social media lessons are:
1. Be there
2. Be yourself
3. Be part of the community
4. Be committed to being awesome
These four points are easily relatable to our involvement in social media as individuals, but what about for a corporation? We’ve identified that in order to be successful in social media we need to be authentic to ourselves and participate constantly. In order for a corporation to be effective in their social media presence, it’s important that it becomes an important part of the PR program, not an afterthought added on simply to say “oh yeah, we’re involved in social media too.”
Mashable recently posted an article providing a great example of social media presence for a B2B company. Palisade Systems has adopted Twitter as an integral part of their PR efforts, and through following industry experts and analysts and constantly participating in conversations in the space the company has been able to build valuable relationships and build name recognition – one of their high-level business goals.
Palisade Systems follows the four “Rick Astley” rules of social media, and has achieved business goals as a result. If you’re interested in learning more about how your B2B company can adopt a successful social media PR strategy, get in touch! For now, Happy Friday and enjoy some Rick Astley to end your week:
By Ashleigh Egan