Don’t go quiet with your comms, but do avoid tone-deaf marketing

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the whole world to a standstill, reshaping the way we must approach almost all aspects of life. With health and safety being the priority, businesses must find their own way to approach the pandemic and rework their strategies to ensure they can continue to operate effectively. While many elements of our life are only changed on a temporary basis, we do not know for how long this will continue, and which elements may never return to how they were before. The virtual world has become more important than ever before and the ability to connect with our family, friends and colleagues on a remote basis is crucial for any semblance of normality, our wellbeing and to maintain any business activity at all. However, while many things are at a standstill, one area which is absolutely in…

Despite media criticism about the proliferation of 'fake news', some marketers see nothing wrong with using it to score flashy results for clients

SearchLeeds always brings a raft of quality talks from British agencies offering their opinions on hot-button issues and advice on alternative approaches you can try out for everything from SEO to PPC, CRO, and other triple-initialled areas of digital marketing. However, one talk caught my eye for the wrong reasons. Oliver Brett from Screaming Frog delivered a talk titled ‘How to make fake news for links’, the description of which asks: “Tired of infographics? Got a bunch of clients nobody’s ever heard of? Got no budget, but need top-level links? Why not orchestrate your own hilarious viral news stories for great exposure?” [si_guide_block id="85104" title="Download our Free Resource – Top 10 common content marketing mistakes" description="Our free content marketing mistakes guide…

PR is all about storytelling, but to do this effectively, you need to keep up to date with the latest channels and tactics.

As multifaceted as it is, PR revolves around one central idea: storytelling. It’s our job to craft stories that connect and inspire — and to deploy those stories through mass communication channels. The challenge is that these channels are constantly shifting with generational and societal trends, interests, and preferences. [si_guide_block id="142372" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Low-budget PR for professional services businesses" description="This guides gives you seven essential questions you need to answer before planning your campaign, and then we'll tell you the best practice to follow for coming up with an engaging hook for your PR story."/] As an industry, we’re tasked with staying on top of — and even ahead of — the changing communications landscape to continue delivering effective messages to audiences.

A dynamic landscape

Before we…

It’s essential for PR campaigns to be well thought out and engaging for target audiences on a personal level, or else they risk ending in disaster

It can be difficult to own up to, but time and again we can be found guilty of adopting half-baked or ill-thought-out PR strategies that are destined to fail before they’ve even gotten underway. We live in a time where audiences are becoming increasingly wise to empty marketing affectations and baseless promises. Today, customers are eager to feel valued, even cherished for their business. 2019 is brimful of shifting sands and moving goalposts. It’s essential for PR campaigns to be well thought out and engaging for target audiences on a personal level, or else they risk ending in disaster. Failing to understand your prospective customers could leave your business going the way of United Airlines, BP or …

Digital PR techniques that will increase your organic rankings and ROI

The rise of PR-fuelled marketing in the face of diminishing returns on advertising has seen 66% of marketers rank quality content as their top marketing priority. With so much riding on the reputation of a brand, the value of content marketing, earned media, link building and brand reputation management will only continue growing in the race to drive profitable customer action. Yet there seems to be pressure for PR professionals to not only place stories that boost brand awareness on the most relevant websites but also attain search KPIs such as links, traffic and domain rankings too. The simple fact is - content campaigns with hundreds of links are completely irrelevant unless the exact ROI of those campaigns are clearly measured. [si_guide_block id="5605" title="Download our Premium Resource – Digital marketing strategy guide" description="Our guide is packed with practical, actionable, step-by-step guidance so…

Positive and negative PR campaigns can affect brand equity and identity - learn how to apply positive PR across touchpoints in the RACE customer lifecycle

It's a general marketing myth that without PR (positive or negative) consumers won't know who you are and how you can help - wrong. Although effective PR can be the make or break for smaller companies who want to get their name, vision and message out to the public, larger brands have build a brand identity that keeps them noticed regardless of ill-thought out publicity stunts and, sometimes, even the products they offer. Brand equity refers to the customer's perception of a brand name or company rather than the multitude of products or services they provide. Brands that successfully create a strong online and offline brand equity includes: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix etc. You can instantly identify them, even if you don't know everything they offer. However, solely…

Digital PR is here to stay folks, but how do you make it a success?

Digital PR is one of those new-fangled buzzwords that everyone is talking about at the minute. But, like influencer marketing, a lot of people aren’t too sure what it is, or how to make a success of it. But digital PR is here to stay folks. As more and more businesses try and maximize on the overlap between SEO and PR. But what makes digital PR different from regular PR? And how can you make a success of it? Essentially, Digital PR is the art of placing a press article, whilst also earning a link back from the publication to your site. This is obviously different from traditional PR, where you’re looking to maximize brand awareness and place the brand front and centre of an audience’s mind. Your KPIs will differ for digital PR too. With traditional press,…

Research shows how PR specialists use social networks

This new Social PR Survey, including data from the Social Journalism Study shows how important social media is to PR Specialists. So how are PRs using social media? Is it to post their own content, repost content, monitor brands, engage with the media or join in conversations? As you'd expect, it's popular with more than 2/3 using social media on a daily basis. This report shows how it breaks down.

So, how active are PR Professionals who are using social media?

As expected, reasons for using social media include promoting their own content (74%) and a secondary goal is to reach out to the media.

The most used platforms when using Social Media for PR?

In terms of the preferred platforms, they primarily promote their content across Facebook and Twitter, with the latter…

How to manage a PR crisis using social media intelligence

Sometimes, however much you prepare, a crisis is unavoidable. It can at happen at any time and for any number of reasons but whatever happens companies and organisations need to try to manage the crisis when it happens. Of course this has become quite tricky with the incredible volume of posts on social networks making it hard to track every facet of a problem. But with the right social media intelligence software, PR and Communications teams can better manage a potential crisis situation. Social data is of particular use in two stages of a crisis: detecting the beginnings of a crisis and managing the crisis. This post will explain how social intelligence (monitoring and analysing online data) can help you manage these two stages quickly and effectively.

Detecting a crisis

Understanding…

A 10 step online PR process to prepare and initiate the perfect Digital PR campaign

The C word, you know the one I’m talking about. It’s the word that can put you in the good books with Google and holds the key to adding value to your clients website. We’ve all heard time and time again that this is the key to gaining success in the world of digital marketing. That’s true, but don’t for a minute think that this creation of content is the end of the road. Contrary to Kevin Costner and his  'Field of Dreams' movie quote, if you build it, they may or may not come. So! What do we have to do to get our beautiful creations out there? Whether they are artistic infographics or feature length articles, you can guarantee that somebody, somewhere wants them to…