PR continues to evolve, making it almost unrecognisable to the industry it was 10 years ago. Okay, unrecognisable may be a slight exaggeration. But it has changed significantly from traditional tactics, to now involving content creation, social media, and digital strategies to name but a few.
With consumers permanently attached to their smart phones and tablets, the strength of a digital campaign is integral to building a loyal fan base. The Jammers have built strong social media and digital campaigns for many of our clients, recently awarded gold for Best Use of Social Media at the CIPR PRide Awards 2016. Here are some of our thoughts on what makes good digital PR:
Create content that resonates with the audience
People are inundated with product information these days. Even by simply visiting a company’s website, they are then bombarded with ads in their Facebook news feed. This level of retargeting has caused consumers to become a lot savvier about marketing, resulting in product posts losing strength of impact and often being ignored.
With this in mind, brands that mainly post product news on their social media channels may suffer from low levels of engagement. Although product news is important, content that resonates and evokes a response from followers, is more likely to attract attention and gain a good level of interactions. By finding the right balance between marketing news and rich, interesting content, brands can both educate their fans on their offerings while encouraging them to interact and become familiar with the brand – which will generate loyal, engaged followers.
We create engaging social media content for many of our clients, including Escape Travel Card, C.K tools, and Argos Pet Insurance – all of whom have entirely different audiences, ranging from holiday goers, tradies, and pet owners. Our approach for each client is vastly different, creating content that strikes a chord with each demographic and explores the topics of interest to them, successfully increasing our clients’ following and engagement levels.
Think SEO
SEO and PR have a lot more in common than you might think. Marrying the two can massively help achieve your marketing goals. Here at JAM, we know that good PR will always aim to have a company’s SEO performance in mind, and by creating authentic content using a client’s key SEO terms we can help organically bump up the company’s rankings on Google and enhance the likelihood of click-throughs to their website. That said, we would NEVER compromise quality copy for the sake of SEO. Copy and content must be useful, engaging and fit for purpose.
A good example of this is our client Argos Pet Insurance’s website. They have a great blog offering tips to pet owners, using content that is in-line with both their PR and marketing objectives.
Use online influencers
Another great tool for digital PR campaigns is utilising online influencers. Influencers, such as bloggers, journalists or celebrities, have large groups of loyal followers, helping to share your brand’s message and connect you with your target audience in a natural way without spooking them with too much sales talk.
Getting your product into an influencer’s hands and allowing them to spread the word about your brand is a fantastic way of building your authority with potential new customers.
In order to get the word out about our client, Escape Travel Card, a crucial aspect of our digital campaign is to connect with key travel bloggers and journalists to arrange for them to trial a card. Their testimony is creating a positive reputation for the brand and helping drive traffic to the Escape website. The online reviews are also a godsend for SEO purposes, while creating shareable, engaging content for social media at the same time.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for the rapidly evolving digital PR landscape. To learn more about the best strategy and tactics to enhance your brand’s digital footprint, why not give us a shout? We’re certain we can deliver exceptional results for you. Contact Jaime@jampr.co.uk or pop down to our offices in Manchester’s Northern Quarter for a brew!
