From working in traditional marketing, you’ll certainly be familiar with public relations. PR has many different benefits and can be delivered across various vehicles. It’s all about switching your thinking cap to creative mode in order to secure exposure. You only have a few shots with the press, so you want to give it your all. In this article, I will define the importance of PR and how it can benefit your digital marketing campaign. This article will provide you with the knowledge you need to get your PR and content marketing strategies started.
What is PR?
PR tends to focus on editorial content, which, if targeted to the right audience and executed in the appropriate way, earns media. It takes a lot of effort to gain exposure, so you’ve got to be prepared for no instant quick wins.
To be a true outreach specialist, PR experts are responsible for building long-term relationships with journalists and bloggers. It is vital to build a rapport with key influencers in your client’s field to ensure they’ll feature you time and time again.
You also have to focus your energy on conjuring up creative content concepts to provide substance and structure to a campaign. When arriving at your creative conclusions, it’s important to really grasp the campaign objectives and base your ideas around supporting them.
You must also have an accurate and precise understanding of the target audiences of the campaign and how exactly to go about reaching out to them. Certain age groups and genders may be approached differently, so it’s vital in PR that you do thorough research into every possibility prior to a to a campaign.
It’s all about creating brand awareness and getting the right message across to the right people.
Content for online PR campaigns
For creative thinkers, one of the main benefits of working in PR is the encouragement to break the rules and think outside of the box. It’s all about coming up with fresh and original concepts. From press launches to front cover pitches, you want to produce attention-grabbing content that achieves the desired effect at the core of the campaign.
To achieve successful content for online PR campaigns, the objective and target audiences must be clear in your mind. With the messaging that you wish to get across as the fuel behind your gears, you’ll be confident with where and who to publish the content. It is also refreshing to consider that one concept can work across a range of different platforms, for example, as a press release, onsite copy or video.
Who to engage with
Once you’ve identified who the key influencers are in your industry, you will then need to form a list of targets to fire press releases at. When creating your list, form it with primary and secondary targets. It’s worth having a mix so that you have a variety of press coming from all angles. When approaching contacts from the list, ensure you use a personalized approach. We’re all humans; if you make it sound too robotic and obvious that you’ve sent the same thing to 10 people already, it’s not going to engage the target. Always start of the email with greeting them by their first names only. This is a friendly approach that proves you’ve made the effort to contact them personally.
It is important to understand that in this technique of marketing and brand awareness, the process takes time. Unless your content is breaking news and a world exclusive, there are new quick wins here. Make sure you’ve conducted intense research on your key influencers so that you can see what topics they’re most interested in and know exactly what content to create.
It’s also very useful to be aware that they have their own deadlines that they have to meet. For example, monthly publications may have a cut-off date for content submission. This gives you a window of time when you know they’re on the hunt for concepts and contributions.