Email signature – the one thing that we set up when we start our job, and then probably forget about it. But it’s there, and in the PR/Outreach world, it’s getting noticed – a lot!
We hear all about making our outreach emails personal, so why there is a minimum information about us, the senders?
Have you seen consumer (and even B2B) journalists’ signature lately? Guess what, they all share their Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. And we should do the same.
You asking why? Well, as we all try making our emails personalised, this is going to help. Because this gives us another way to show that there is a person getting in touch with them.
It’s tested!
After I added my Instagram handle to the email (Twitter was always there) I noticed that journalists started following me and we became somehow friends. Meaning, the next time I contacted them, they mentioned they saw the lovely picture of Christmas cinema and asked how was it, and I could say I saw a photo from their trip with the kids and it looked like they had a lot of fun. By adding my social media profiles to my email signature I built more and stronger relationships.
Once you make ‘friends’ via Twitter and Instagram, as with any relationship, you need to maintain it. Retweet journalists’ requests to help. Or even help with some if relevant. I ended up on BBCRadio5Live talking about how O2 outage affected my day – I knew I can help and I wanted to make sure that the journalist knows I (and my clients) are here to help with any other future requests.
Using relevant hashtags
Now, to have any conversation on Twitter especially if you are using it for your outreach, you need to use correct hashtags. So if you’re offering content you want to ensure journalists see it. If you’re looking for help with your story #journorequest and #prrequest are great hashtags. If you need a case study the bloggers’ community is always willing to share their stories so use #bloggerswanted, for example.
Don’t get carried away
Now we need to remember that we still need to keep things professional. So maybe using #journorequest for every Tweet about your content to ‘promote’ it is not the best idea. The same with #bloggerswanted, don’t try to outreach on Twitter abusing these hashtags – not because I mind, but because other people using this hashtag for work will, and they will let you know about it!
Instagram is also, as we all know, great to get some real photos, I experimented and searched case studies by filtering photos, I found some great ones, asked for a permission to use their photo and got it! It added the ‘real life’ feel to the story I was working on.
Summary
So – add your social media profiles to your email signature to make sure they know who you are (as you probably won’t meet IRL).
And use social media fully – to benefit your campaigns and projects!
