social media PR tools to watch in 2012

Technology and social media continue to evolve and we admit it…  it can be incredibly hard to keep up sometimes. In 2012, brand presence on variety of social platforms will be absolutely essential for business … but which ones do you choose? We identified the top 3 key platforms that we believe will be most popular for business in the coming year, offering a well-rounded approach to social media PR in 2012.

After you take a read, don’t forget to take our poll at the end of this post!

1. Google

SEO will continue be vital to content marketing – and as google adjusts its algorithm for search, so must business by adjusting their strategy in order to continue to improve page rank and be found online.

More and more business will be taking advantage of Google+ for Business to manage  social media communities for their brand. We have witnessed many individuals experiment with, and embrace, Google+ for personal use, but surprisingly, very few businesses have jumped on board. We believe that will change in the coming year.  As more business people find their comfort level with Google+ on a personal level, they will migrate to Google+ for business.

2. Twitter

Twitter brand pages will be all the rage for business as the integrated geo-targeting and design benefits of improved space for logos, taglines and key messaging are unveiled in the first quarter.  Klout will continue to be known as ‘the online measurement tool’ for 2012, and you can expect to see some changes there too along the way.

3. Facebook for Business

Company Facebook pages for business will continue to play a key role in brand engagement. The year 2011 proved that the demographics for desirable customer profiles exist on Facebook. Does your business? If not, perhaps it should be there for 2012. It will only continue to grow in popularity and be a necessity to grow business next year.

Of course, it’s important to have a strong communications strategy centered around all of these platforms along with a solid plan. That’s why in 2012, we predict that many organizations will move to social media monitoring to keep track of what is being said about their brands and products, (and even their competitors). Can you blame them?

Monitoring will pack a pretty powerful punch to PR in 2012. We talked about the benefits of social media monitoring here.

We suspect more and more companies will use the information they gather in a ‘new kind of research’ to help them engage with target audiences, media and online influencers more directly, which will impact their bottom lines.

So, if you had to pick three – these would be our recommendation.  (And a little media monitoring wouldn’t hurt). How many of these platforms are you currently using and which ones do you plan to use in your marketing strategy this coming year?

Take our Poll…

Follow us on Google+, Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date on how these three key platforms offer a well-rounded approach to PR as they evolve in the coming year.

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