At its core, Public Relations (PR) is about starting a conversation. Through media relations, campaigns, and strategic partnerships, we share stories that build brands and strengthen relationships. In today’s technological age, it is no longer enough to rely solely on traditional PR – like media relations – to generate results. The media landscape is evolving. Research shows us that the way consumers process information is changing. The rise of new media – e-news, social media, podcasting, and VODcasting – is allowing consumers to control the flow and quality of information like never before.
But with each new challenge comes new opportunity.
Here are three tips to easily integrate PR into your communications and marketing:
1. Execute in-house PR through your owned channels
In recent years, businesses have started to realise the critical importance of content marketing as a PR tool. Content marketing is a strategic approach, usually executed through websites, electronic direct mail (eDMs) and social media, that creates and distributes valuable, timely, relevant content to attract and build relationships with new and existing audiences.
The 2016 social media Sensis found that consumers are more likely to trust a brand that has positive interactions with its audience on social media. Despite this, only half (48%) of all small and medium businesses are using social media compared to 79% of big business.
Social media aside, developing a blog or news section on your website or sending regular eDMs are effective methods to build your customer database and improve SEO.
2. Set up keyword alerts
A free service offered by Google, Bing and Yahoo, keyword alerts lets you do your own media monitoring by receiving tailored email notifications about any topic of interest.
This tool is great to track any digital coverage of your business, and keep up to date with industry and competitor news. By using words that are specific to your business and industry, you can track the types of stories that are getting coverage and the sentiment and tone of this coverage, helping you t o identify gaps or new business opportunities. Keyword alerts are also great for finding new media outlets to send your content or story to.
When setting up alerts, make sure to use keywords that are relevant to your business and industry and include the names of your competitors.
3. Create a media kit
Last, but certainly not least: digital media kits. Websites are the virtual shopfront of millions of businesses across the world. Your website should be designed to meet the needs of all its users, including media.
Providing a succinct overview of your business, media kits can act as a first point of call for anyone looking for information about your business. Online media kits are truly a win-win, saving you time (from continually answering the same questions), and giving journalists access to everything they need in one, publicly-accessible place.
A well crafted media kit should include:
- An overview of your business and your story. Include your company history and any other interesting information about you or the business.
- Product or service overview.
- Press releases.
- Clippings of any previous media coverage.
- Testimonials.
- List of FAQ’s.
- Images and/or videos – including high resolution, downloadable images of your logo.
- Contact details.
This kit can then be housed on your website either as a webpage or downloadable pdf for anyone who is interested.
Remember, throughout all of your marketing and communications, including PR, consistency is key. It’s important to ensure that your messaging, language and tone remain consistent across all of your communications. This can sometimes be a challenge, and is often when it’s time to call on the pros. But until then, the above three tactics will get your baseline PR humming in no time!
