Chris Mayhew 2m 599
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
In times of austerity trust is everything. Consumers only want to deal with the brands that they know well and that they trust to get it right first time because, truth be told, they cannot afford for things to go wrong. So if anything happens to tarnish a company’s reputation then it can mean that the relationships they have built with their consumers start to break down and the trust is lost.
All this goes to prove that Public Relations is just as important as it’s ever been; maybe even more so. And so if your PR is stuck in a time warp and hasn’t moved into 2013 then it could be detrimental to your brand and the business goals you have laid down for yourself. PR is always changing and so if you aren’t ready to adopt some of the latest techniques then there’s a real danger that you’ll be left behind; something which your business can ill afford at any time let alone during the current tough climate.
So what should you be adopting into your strategy in order to get the most out of your public relations?
SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an industry all on its own but it has recently become clear that using it can really be beneficial to the press releases that professional PR companies send out on a daily basis.
Instead of these being sent out into the virtual wilderness in the hope that some of the relevant people will stumble across them; does it not make sense to optimise them so they can be found easier? SEO is aimed at helping the search engines to detect what you are writing about so that they then know when to offer it as a result to any searchers. The more relevant and helpful they deem your writing to be for users the higher up it will appear in the results.
Optimising in this way can be technical but the basic premise is that you use specific words within your writing that people will be using when searching on the internet for the information you are providing. The good news is that you are already writing great stuff on a daily basis and just by optimising it more for online readers you could greatly increase your reach.
Social Media
Without doubt the biggest change in PR during the last couple of years is in the form of social media. There are now hundreds of different social platforms which people use on a daily basis and which can all be used to help you spread your own business message farther and wider. Social media has allowed businesses to get closer to their consumer base than ever before and this can only be a good thing; providing you go about it in the right way.
There are many ways in which you can take advantage of this new media but the most important one has to be the ability to interact with the real people who use your company on a much more personal level. Furnish them with important information, make them laugh with entertaining posts, make them think with poignant campaigns, but most of all build relationships with them. After all that is what this game is all about, isn’t it?
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
Chris Mayhew works with social media and SEO everyday and knows just how beneficial they can be to a company’s PR campaigns. He would recommend finding an agency that uses these, such as Eclat Marketing, to represent your business.
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