Shared media can act as a powerful amplifier of PR content and coverage beyond a simple media relations campaign.

It makes sense – brands need to look to make the most of every piece of content, improving ‘bang for buck’. For example, if you have a byline attributed to a member of staff, that can be posted to their personal LinkedIn account via the publishing tool. When doing this, just make sure you include a trackable web link back to your website and a note that this has appeared before ‘Originally published in XYZ’. It’s also advisable to wait a little bit before republishing content to LinkedIn that has already appeared in a publication, perhaps even with a change to the top and tail of the piece. To push this piece out further, ask the author to target and share the piece in relevant industry groups on LinkedIn, but no more than two or three to avoid spamming people.

When it comes to sharing media, the best tool at your disposal is your workforce. One easy way to encourage sharing among your workforce is to create a newsletter with shareable content that can be pushed out to their personal social media accounts, with pre-written tweets and updates. Another good tactic is to provide employees with social media influence with some training. For example, you could train your sales team to use LinkedIn to post content and take part in conversations in their feed and in groups.

It’s also important to have visual content available for sharing, which will improve impression and clicks on social media. Something simple like a photograph works, or even an infographic. Whilst they may have lost their media clout, infographics still hold a very important role on social media, and having one that can be cut into bitesize chunks can create good content for your channels to influence sharing.

Two final things to consider when sharing content – if you have a presentation or content that is suitable for Slideshare, you can get extra eyeballs on the content and get some good Google juice (Slideshare has a high domain authority). Another option is video, like a talking heads interview-style piece to discuss research, whitepaper and opinions on YouTube or Vimeo.

Over the coming weeks, Firefly will be sharing tactics on how to use owned, shared and paid options to help take your earned media and PR content further. Tune in next week to learn about how to amplify coverage and content using paid channels.