*This post is a guest post from Erin Serkaian, an associate at Reputation Partners in Chicago. As a fellow Pinnacle partner, RP and BG share best practices and ideas with one another regarding social media, crisis planning and corporate communications.

Social media strategy in corporate communications is similar to social media in consumer communications in many ways. At the end of the day, social media is just another “tool in the PR toolbox.”  It can be used to create online conversations, increase transparency, mitigate an online reputation attack and pump personality into a brand (like our client BOMA/Chicago has done with its Facebook page).

The key difference when talking about social media in corporate communications is an emphasis on an expanded audience. Corporate communications requires PR professionals to consider many different audiences, including employees, investors, business partners, and trade and business media. It also requires you to have to consider the type of information the audience wants/need and how they like to be communicated with.

Here are a few of the additional audiences that may need more of a focus in corporate social media program:

• Employees: Corporations generally have a much larger employee base, and therefore should consider using social media to communicate with them. These employees can be a company’s strongest group of evangelists, so engagement is critical. IBM has thousands of employee blogs related to every facet of its business. These blogs allow their employees to have a voice for IBM and empower the employees to share their area of expertise. Giving employees ownership increases their pride in their company and their role within the company.

• Current/Potential Business or Community Partners: With 70 million active business professionals on the site, Linkedin can be a strong tool for connecting with potential business or community partners. The platform allows you to reach out to people your corporation would like to work with via groups or introductions, and tends to have a much better result than cold calling or emailing. Companies can also use  a company blog to showcase positive, meaningful business achievements. Take McDonald’s blog dedicated to discussing corporate social responsibility. This blog boosts the company’s reputation as a good corporate citizen and business partner encouraging potential partners to get involved.

• Media: Hundreds of journalists and bloggers mine for story ideas on Twitter, as well as potential sources. A corporation should be “owning” its industry on Twitter by aligning and engaging with individuals who have a prominent share of voice, contributing to hashtag conversations, and posting links to company news and information.

• Investors: According to Brunswick Group, 50 percent of investors in the United States have used social media to research an investment decision. Cultivating relationships with influential financial bloggers will help draw positive attention to your corporation’s investment story. Sharing these positive stories on social networks, like Linkedin, can be beneficial as well. Then all the potential investors you are connected with will see the positive story in their news feed.

These are just a handful of audiences and tactics to consider when developing a strategy for social media in corporate communications. Each company has different goals, and needs specific social media strategies designed to energize and shape the corporate reputation.

How are you using social media in corporate communications?