It's official: social media is infiltrating all company departments and functions. A spokesperson is one of those people who can definitely benefit from social media. Let's have a look at a spokesperson's responsibilities and how social media can be of use. The key lies in monitoring, but there's no need to monitor social media 24/7. A tool can send you automatic email notifications whenever something interesting is picked up or when a crisis is lurking.
Spread information and follow up on results/reactions
Your brand or organization has an announcement to make, so you organize an official press announcement. Newspapers and blogs will probably report on the announcement. Once the news is out, people will start discussing it on social media. You can easily follow up on everything published and said about it online with a monitoring tool.
If your brand is already using a tool, you can easily set up a filter in the topic about your brand to extract everything about the press announcement. You can then enable automatic emails whenever something is said about it. Following up on this has several advantages: you watch and learn (if, for example, people tend to misinterpret the information) and you can react early if necessary.
Build and maintain contacts with the press
Most, if not all, journalists are active on social media. They have to because nowadays Twitter users are almost always ahead of newspapers in reporting on breaking news. Building and maintaining a good relationship with these journalists is often easier via social media. You can receive email alerts whenever a journalist mentions your brand, press announcement or even your industry. Make sure you interact with them now and then: they will remember your name and that's a good thing for your brand's notoriety. The better they know your brand, the more interested they will be in your press announcements.
Follow up on your reputation and respond early in a crisis
People are continually sharing their opinion on social media about a variety of things and your brand or organization can be one of them. It's not the spokesperson's responsibility to react to these messages (that's more a task for community managers or customer support) but he should be in the know of them in times of crisis. A negative comment can explode in your brand's face if it goes 'viral.' As a spokesperson you can receive an email alert whenever a crisis is lurking. If necessary, you can be one step ahead of the spreading comment with an official press announcement.