Business News

GUEST BLOG: How to use digital marketing in your PR campaign

By Business & Finance
26 April 2016
digital marketing

By Sophie Chadwick, senior account manager at Peppermint Soda

Incorporating digital into your PR campaign is not just important. In 2016, it’s essential.

The way we seek out and receive information has completely changed and companies must ensure that their PR campaigns adapt accordingly in order to remain at the forefront of communication.

WHAT’S CHANGED?

The fundamentals of digital PR are not drastically different from traditional PR, but the focus has changed. Companies can now reach a larger, more relevant audience for a longer period of time – but these audiences are faced with an oversaturation of information

To thrive in this climate, brands must create digital marketing campaigns that run alongside their traditional PR campaigns. These campaigns should revolve around getting companies talked about naturally, in the right places, by the right people, at the right time.

There are three things to incorporate:

  • Content marketing
  • Search engine optimisation (SEO)
  • Social media

1. Content Marketing

We’ve all heard the famous quote from Bill Gates: “content is king”. Although this was first said in January 1996, it is now truer than ever. Taking into account the changes in the ways we communicate, content should now be the key driver of all PR and marketing campaigns.

People who are searching for news want something new or useful. Traditional press releases sent to journalists to publish in the newspaper in days gone by don’t work online. In your digital PR campaign you must ensure that you are not writing for the media – instead, you are filling an audience need.

This means anything from top tips to complex guides. Companies need to establish themselves as experts in their field. There may be no way to stop people from shopping around, but a great piece of content can keep a company at the forefront of someone’s mind.

As well as this, the format of content has changed. The most up-to-date PR campaigns will include videos, webinars and interactive guides and there’s sure to be plenty of other exciting new mediums that will become mainstream in the future.

Sophie Chadwick

Sophie Chadwick, Peppermint Soda

2. SEO

When planning a digital PR campaign, companies need to consider all aspects of SEO in the process of deciding what content to produce. This means satisfying both search engine algorithms and real people.

They should research the keywords most relevant to their brand and try to incorporate them into their content. The best way to do this is to consider the kind of terms and questions the desired audience would be looking for and the formats they use to absorb the information. This will help companies to come up with ideas to develop great, relevant content.

As a word of warning though, ensure that all content is of good quality and don’t just pack it full of keywords. Good quality content is much more important than keyword-heavy unreadable copy.

As well as keywords, always optimise pages using descriptive URLs, meta tags and title tags. This will give search engines the indication that the page contains relevant information that a person might want to search for.

Effort should also be made to include links in each piece of content, as every back-link to a website will help to increase the rankings of the site. Search engines take the number of quality inbound links to each site into account when ranking pages.

3. Social media

Social media has changed the face of PR. From the ways that PR executives contact journalists, to how stories are sourced, the use of social media as a PR tool cannot be underestimated.

PR professionals now have more access than ever to journalists thanks to sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, which make it easier for them to search for contacts. With a simple Twitter search, anyone is able to find the right kind of person they need to speak to.

Social media also gives companies the opportunity to discover what their competitors are doing with regards to their PR and marketing campaigns, what their engagement is like, and who their followers are in order to gain insight into their demographic. Studying competitors’ actions can also really help to inspire ideas for future campaigns.

Hashtags are now a PR’s best friend. Creating a hashtag for an event creates a trackable metric that can help measure the event’s success in terms of social mentions and engagement. Companies’ business cards should all have social media account information, and if given out at an event can include the relevant hashtag. This combines digital PR with traditional PR techniques; a well thought-out combination will lead to the most successful campaigns.

COMBINE BOTH DIGITAL AND TRADITIONAL

Completely disregarding either traditional PR or digital PR in campaigns can be incredibly detrimental. The essence of PR is still communication. Combining old techniques with the scope of digital can help companies to reach a much larger, more specific audience.

If you’ve not already, now is the time to implement digital into your PR campaign. The traditional elements of planning, research and execution can be combined with content, SEO and social media to ensure that your efforts are as effective as possible.

Social media has changed the face of PR. From the ways that PR executives contact journalists, to how stories are sourced, the use of social media as a PR tool cannot be underestimated

About the blogger

Sophie Chadwick is a senior account manager at the PR and creative agency Peppermint Soda.

Peppermint Soda is a marketing communications agency delivering strategic campaigns across the most effective channels, including social media, marketing, advertising, PR, websites, blogs and video.

Check Sophie’s views out on Twitter here.