There is no denying that technology has indeed become a fabric in our lives. In the modern-day world of public relations (PR), many of the traditional PR strategies have become obsolete due to the changing world of technology. To truly get the most out of your public relations outreach, Immerse Agency shares the top 3 tips to public relations success that will maximize exposure in today’s digital age.
1. PR Efforts & SEO Practices Need to Align
Always be conscious of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effects when initializing a PR strategy, as SEO is crucial for any business’s success. When adding public relations into the fold, can only boost a company’s SEO. By manipulating high-traffic keywords in your public relations campaign, it will increase your SEO as the keywords help Google register your business’s relevancy with the content for the target audiences. All content must contain these keywords to have this multi-level strategy of digital public relations. Along the same lines, be sure to make your business’s content searchable. This move is an important step.
Since media outlets are what digital PR relies on the most, and the digital PR footprint increases with every mention, comment, or review, PR with SEO advances your business’s capability to attract new traffic to your website.
2. Use Influencers to Expand Your Audience in Your Field
It is common for businesses to turn to social media influencers for increased brand awareness and conversations with their audiences. It is hard to believe that many of the top social media influencers reach bigger audiences than most of the combined circulations of magazines and newspapers! The tried-and-true method of pitching stories to traditional journalists continues to live on, but today’s PR landscape now includes outreach to channels beyond television, radio, and print. That’s where influencers come into the PR mix.
All of the top publications have online versions today; this makes it even more convenient for audiences to receive their news at an even higher speed rate. One drawback is the rise of untrustworthy content, and many people today view the material as “trustworthy” through the bloggers and websites they follow consistently.
After an influencer has been identified as one that creates quality content, your business should be willing to form a partnership. This will allow your company to tap into the influencer’s followers. There needs to be clearly defined specifics in the agreement between Instagram posts, blogs, and tags in Twitter feeds or Facebook mentions. It’s essential to get the best bang for the buck when having these influencer partnerships since the more prominent the influencer leads to a more expensive collaboration.
3. Tracking Your Digital Public Relations Success
It is crucial to ensure that your goals are meeting expectations in the digital public relations landscape, mainly through websites and social media. These three avenues have to be tracked to ensure the PR campaigns are working:
Media Placements
It is essential to follow up with any reporter to ensure that the feature your business was supposed to receive actually gets published. Just because a journalist agrees to do the feature story, doesn’t mean that it will happen. For example, there are cases at the last minute, where the reporter drops the story for a “breaking news” option. This agreement between your company and the media outlet isn’t finalized until your company is mentioned or linked content is set to live.
We recommend using a media monitoring platform like Google Analytics Acquisitions, Critical Mention, or Meltwater to help formulate a report of all the PR placements, brand mentions, ad links, and referrals that the campaign has acquired. These programs are benefiting as they will allow you to monitor traditional media hits, in addition to digital media mentions.
Social Media
To achieve maximum results with your PR campaign, your business needs to keep your social media and PR goals on the same path. Anytime your company lands various media hits such as magazine articles or news features, it’s essential to share that content on social media and have the opportunity to engage with the various audiences. By funneling these audiences to your company’s website and pages, the use of trackable links that will provide essential data on various social media channels.
Domain Authority
A vital step to ensure that your PR campaign is working correctly is checking your company’s domain authority (DA). This result will show if there has been an increase in traffic and interactions with the company’s relevance in the industry. Plenty of new backlinks from media, influencers, and potential partners should be seen with your company’s DA if the PR campaign was successful.
If you have a low DA, it can be turned around when you focus your efforts on developing strong relationships with other sites that have a high DA. Your DA should always have an increase when a PR campaign is put into place, and if this doesn’t happen, it is a big red flag that things need to be changed.
In today’s digital landscape, the cohesiveness of a public relations campaign and a company’s social media, SEO and domain authority is paramount. The PR world is always evolving, trying to keep up with today’s technology and trends. These are just a few of the new avenues for increased brand awareness and conversations with a company’s audiences.
Let’s chat about your public relations goals and initiatives. Contact us today!
