Social media has a huge impact on how a brand’s messages get into the world. It can encourage brands’ relationships with their audiences, amplifying their PR messages, and spreading engaging content. Whether it comes to working with influencers, creating advertisements, or promoting a brand, social media is a crucial foundation for any company in today’s society, PR firms included.

As an intern for Curator, I was encouraged to create three separate goals that I would like to accomplish by the end of my internship. As I thought about what my goals could be, I knew that social media was a part of what our clients focused on, but was it something that Curator personally focused on? At Curator, they are dedicated to doing the best they can for their clients and their images in the media world. But how could they promote themselves in social media in a way that wasn’t just repeating how their clients promote themselves?

As I worked on designing a social media calendar and content for Curator, this was a common theme brought up. It was difficult to create personalized content promoting Curator and what they were doing for clients in a way that was unique from their own clients’ content. As I researched other agencies on Instagram and Facebook, I noticed that this seemed to be a similarity, and that their social media presences were not nearly as prominent as those of their clients. Because of this, I began to brainstorm ways that social media could be the most effective for Public Relations agencies.

After doing research, I found that one of the most direct ways that Curator or other Public Relations agencies could use their social media is to connect with journalists. This can be done by engaging with their content, whether its liking or responding to their post or tweets or taking time to read their articles. Another way is by sharing relevant content from the industry. Creating individual content on social media can be important, however reposting and sharing articles that Curator has created for clients can be just as beneficial. This is because it can add to an agency’s credibility while giving journalists the opportunity to interact with them.

Another way that agencies can use their social media is to make announcements. This can range from announcing awards, product launches, company updates, or short videos or links to articles, whether on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and/or Instagram. Shown below is a post created by our other spring intern, Kira, promoting Skanska for the official groundbreaking of The Eight, a new office building they’re developing in Bellevue. This post was created to show not only Skanska’s media presence, but also how Curator helped them achieve that, so that the message was unique to Curator’s social media goals.

Overall, social media can be a crucial element for not only clients, but also for Public Relations agencies themselves. Though promoting your client’s brand should be a top priority, it is also important to promote your own company and show the work that you are doing for your clients in order to get out there so other companies and journalists can see this. It may be difficult to create engaging and consistent content that is not copying your client, but it will pay off in the end.