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PR Daily: What They're Doing Right and Wrong, A SM Audit

  • Writer: joshuawhaan
    joshuawhaan
  • Sep 13, 2022
  • 6 min read

PR Daily is a news site, produced by Ragan Communications, that specializes in public relations and marketing. Ragan is based in Chicago and offers content on Ragan.com alongside PRDaily.com. PR Daily posts articles giving business tips regarding social media, crisis management, media relations, and more. PR Daily also provides their insights and headlines on their social media accounts. In this post I'll be breaking down some basic metrics of PR Daily's Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and give some feedback for ways that PR Daily can improve as well as their strengths.


Facebook-@prdaily




The first thing to notice when visiting this Facebook page is the design. A big black box with large white print reads "PR Daily", just underneath it lies slightly less pronounced cursive writing that claims, "The Daily Resource for PR Professionals". The profile picture uses the same font but includes a small "Ragan's" above the left aligned and stacked "PR Daily". Holistically, the page is simple and professional, not meant to catch the eyes of the masses. The brand appears candid and business casual, good at staying in their lane.

This account has 105,380 likes and 108,352 followers. They shine with a 4.7 star review average from 142 reviews. So lets take a look at the last two weeks for PR Daily. As of 12:10 pm on September 12, 2022, PR Daily posted 35 times in the past two weeks. Despite such a diligent output of content their follower interaction was very low. Collectively garnering 31 likes, 1 love, 2 comments, and 3 shares. The top three posts from my biweekly report will be displayed bellow, along with a hyperlink to the PR Daily FB page.

I find it ironic that one of their top performing post is about connecting with an audience on Facebook but only has 5 likes. As I mentioned before, I think they do a good job of staying in their lane but possibly too good a job. Any company could benefit from being more mainstream. However, recognition takes hard work. PR Daily is verified, a difficult status to achieve, which means they know how to put in the work. So, what can be done differently? I personally think they need to loosen their collar even more if they want to attract the masses. People like interacting with brands who have personality. From the post about pizza chains mourning the queen's death it's pretty clear that humor could be a potential strong suit for PR Daily. Despite being a B2C business model, I think they would gain publicity from being less formal/boring. Their post photos look like IDs from a distance instead of eyecatchers. They need to catch people's attention with the visuals and inform them with the descriptions. Like the Social Media Conference post, what is cool about it? It's happening in Disney World! The event idea and fact that it's happening in Disney World should be the only discernable factors from the post image, details can live in the description. While I think their current formula for posting is appropriate, I think a more dynamic posting method and theme could overall improve their audience and interaction with their community.























































Twitter-@PRDaily




Remember the design for PR Daily's Facebook, now you know their Twitter page design. Because they are identical. Brand consistency is important and I'm not mad at this decision but it begs the question, "why follow all their socials?". If all of their social media accounts are clones then nobody is going to find their Facebook account and get excited about their Twitter. Perhaps one of these accounts could be used to test content, themes, and techniques while the other would remain more professional and safe. Before I get ahead of myself let's take a closer look at PR Daily's Twitter.

They're currently edging out their Facebook account with 116.3k followers and 67.6k Tweets. I'm not a huge Twitter guy but that sounds like a lot of Tweets, time to focus on more recent activity. As of 4:04 pm, September 12, 2022, PR Daily posted 53 tweets in the past two weeks. Significantly higher than their Facebook(35) account. But only slightly better interaction rates. All 53 post together gathered 82 likes, 2 comments, 39 retweets, and zero shares. The hottest posts will be displayed bellow with a URL to PR Daily's Twitter page.

I was curious what the two comments from the past two weeks were and they were both posted by the same person, PR Daily. I believe they posted these comments because Twitter doesn't allow editing and something was left out of the original post. I was going to recommend more interaction with their followers but nobody is commenting. To overcome this they might want to consider some less popular antics. I can't see who is regularly liking and retweeting them but they can. This could be a good way for PR Daily to connect with their best supporters. With so few people liking & retweeting their posts, it would be easy for them to find the regular interacting accounts. Then they could screen them, reach out, and reward them. Rewards don't have to be crazy huge for people to feel appreciated. Giving shout-outs, care packages, or premium subscriptions could be a low budget way of recognizing their true supporters. I would advise against repost-to-win competitions however, it doesn't feels like gratitude when people are required to do something before being rewarded.



















































































LinkedIn-@Ragan Communications and PR Daily





This LinkedIn page is a joint account but I'm counting it because it heavily involves PR Daily. The home page is shockingly not similar to their other social media accounts but it's equally as boring. I believe that Ragan Communication's theme colors are blue and white, which explains the theme change. They simply decided to put the Ragan foot forward. I would describe the home page layout even more but it is just a bunch of blue and white rectangles and squares. I'll include the URL bellow their best performing posts from the past two weeks.

LinkedIn is certainly the outlier amongst the three socials I am covering, so let's see how it stacks up. As of 4:28 pm, September 13, 2022, they're dwarfed in followers with only 28,611. Interesting enough to mention, they are listed under, "Book and Periodical Publishing", which seems distant from their other descriptions. Unique to LinkedIn, I can see 82 of their employee's accounts. I'm not here to stalk anyone though. In the past two weeks they posted 59 times! Hard work pays off, these posts got 150 likes, 4 comments, and 18 shares. Not sure if you can tell whether any were sent but if you can then none were.

For my recommendations I'd like to examine a top performer post of theirs because it performed so much better. The post is about their social media conference in Disney World, more specifically that Volkswagen of America, Inc's Patrick Pho is speaking. The details are criminally boring. This post wasn't unique and followed the exact formula that other posts about their conference followed. Unwavering in my curiosity, I examined the list of people who liked the post and found 1 outstanding link. A lot of the likers worked at Volkswagon of America. Why did this help a post? I'm purely speculating at this point but VW of America could have dropped the link in a newsletter/work note and promoted the event within their own company. An identical post from only 5 days ago has only 2 likes and an identical post from three weeks ago has 63 likes. The 46 like post had two of the first three likers from Volkswagon while the 5 day old post has zero out of two. So what did PR Daily do right? Well it is still speculation but they probably just made a good connection with Volkswagon of America. This shows the power of real networking and how it can even impact social media. PR Daily should start requesting internal announcements from the companies they work with because it could really boost their social media reach.





























































Diving into PR Daily's social media accounts was fun and boring at the same time. They're very good at appearing professional and acting professional. The real question is whether this is completely advantageous. I believe that all their accounts, but especially Twitter and Facebook could use more creativity and less formality. People come to social media for a good time. Even if their socials didn't provide any useful information, at least people could find their website which is meant for the serious audience. I think an educational market exists on social media but many businesses including PR Daily could use a few less headlines and a few more memes.


 
 
 

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