By Michael Litman, AdAge Top 20 Most Influential PR Blogger in the UK

You’ve asked the question before: “how do we maximise the potential coverage that our campaigns could get on social media?”

Some think that coverage is automatic, it just happens without any work; and don’t understand the detail oriented approach that is required for success. Here are my thoughts on what you really need to do, to give yourself the best chance of making your campaign famous.

In brief, there are five things you’ll need to consider:

• Forward planning
• Resource
• Integration
• Contacts
• Enthusiasm

(1) Forward planning

The awareness and exposure piece for any campaign doesn’t happen over night. It takes weeks, if not months of preparation, teamwork and working towards a structured project plan. When people talk about content going viral, it will more often than not, have had some initial support to start the ball rolling. This could be through myriad ways including Facebook ads, video seeding, sponsored tweets, promotion via company newsletter, strong visibility on the company homepage and so on.

(2) Resource

Ensuring that a campaign gets heard is a critical part of the work, but this often gets sidelined, forgotten or not even thought about until it’s too late. It takes time and persistence to get mass-coverage, however good the content. The best execution is tailored; and is made easy for the media in question, by providing assets ready for use on social channels.

(3) Integration

You need to be thinking at the start, how you would involve and leverage all the owned properties you have which can help with the exposure of the campaign. Again, this is often something that is either forgotten or left until the last minute, and it too is an important factor for success. However great the campaign, if it is an isolated island on the Internet that no-one knows about, it will continue to be just that. Think about everything that could help you. Do you have a newsletter base, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and other social profiles that you can help signpost to your destination?

(4) Contacts

I’ve run the online PR and social activations on numerous campaigns in the past, and as a blogger myself, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the person I am reaching out to. I ask myself “Would I write about this? Why? What’s the angle? What’s in it for me?” People write about campaigns and content that says something about themselves. Content is currency. People share things to reinforce a perception of their identity or website. Tap in to this.

(5) Enthusiasm

It really is infectious when someone reaches out to you with a genuine passion for what they are promoting. Especially for a low interest product or service, I always find it valuable to see what the benefit is of getting in touch with your target is in the first place. Of course it helps if there’s some value to the individual reaching out to, along with their friends. Don’t forget personal motives; harness them for your own benefit.

You can follow Michael on Twitter: @mlitman

Michael Litman is a digital strategist, having worked at agencies including Poke and social media planner at Dare.

In his spare time, he is a columnist for Communicate Magazine and writer for other industry leading websites including Mashable, The Kernel, Adverblog, The Wall and .NET magazine.  He has worked on social strategies and campaigns for a diverse range of clients ranging from technology, mobile, consumer, hospitality, automotive, FMCG to public sector. You can find his blog at http://www.litmanlive.co.uk/blog.