Channels|Digital PR
Digital PR is the professional maintenance of a favorable online image to earn introductions to new audiences.
2023 is right around the corner. A new year always brings unknowns, but this year preparing your digital PR and marketing strategy is more important than ever.
This week the focus is on communication – something that is vital to every aspect of our lives.
And if you are working in marketing, PR, social media, or communications in the workplace, it is the very core of your profession. Although there are the accepted rules of good communication that have stood the test of time, technology has disrupted, and in some cases completely upended, the process.
If you thought we’d reached a point where all businesses were up to speed digitally, think again. According to a CMO survey, digital marketing spending reached 58 percent of marketing budgets, reflecting 15.8 percent growth over the last year. While most have made a good start, and more than half now report that they are in making good progress, only 11 percent of companies have fully institutionalized the digital transformation process.
One of the duties of a PR person is to monitor the environment and give feedback to the executives of a brand so that they can align their vision and their activities with the trending sentiment of their publics. However, this can prove to be a tricky tightrope act. Witness the Coca Cola debacle of "sensitivity" training intended to lessen racial tensions in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
You keep hearing that it’s vital to learn how to use data and analytics, but the very thought gives you a headache. You’re a PR person, not a data scientist. (And that’s probably the last thing you’d ever want to be.)You love your job and you thrive on creating content and messaging that builds awareness, authority, and affinity for your brand.
Although Google’s algorithm is very complicated and includes over 250 different elements, luckily for us they’ve been very open and clear about what gets good ranking in their search engine. Their stated goal is to organize the information on the internet and give their users the very best possible experience and result when they search for something online. With that in mind, their parameters for ranking make perfect sense.
If you're studying PR, or you're working in the industry, the recent study from USC Annenberg should be by your bedside. The report covers the disruption of the PR industry, what's changing, what talent is needed in the new model of PR, and where the industry is headed.
Digital technology is constantly evolving and changing and as it does, it affects how we craft our business communications. Keep your eye on these five content trends that affect your PR and marketing strategy:
Brands and organizations are naturally interested in the journey of their customers, supporters or members. Where did they find out about us, what fires up their interest, what moved them to become a customer or client or patient, and what prompts them to act as an advocate?
The TEKsystems report on the Top Digital Skills CMOs are looking for in 2018 has analytics top of the list.While measurement has long been a vital part of marketing, it hasn't always been part of the required PR resume. That's changing. In a recent post PR News stated:
"Data analytics and insights will be more valuable on your resume than "people skills" or great writing."
If the idea of technology invading the practice of PR freaks you out a little, perhaps all you need is a different perspective. Yes, technology can be daunting, but it can also make your life a lot easier, help you achieve better results and demonstrate the value of your work.
These three tools can do just that.
PR Measurement is fast becoming a hot topic of conversation among PR practitioners.
“Measurement has to be a focus for PR. In the digital world everyone has to start to look at the metrics to help them drive strategy.”
Eileen Sheil, Executive Director of Communications at the Cleveland Clinic.
This is an interview with Eileen Sheil about the changes in the practice of PR and the need for measuring the value of our work.
It's that time of year when predictions and suggestions are made for the new year. Forbes made a list of the digital skills they see as the most important and TEKsystems polled 250 CMOs to find out what skills they're looking for in 2018. Distilling all this data down into one list, here are my picks:
There's been a lot of discussion around women’s rights this year. One issue that hasn’t received much attention is women's financial literacy and the ability to make her own financial decisions. While the other issues are important, this one could be the most important of all. The ability to make wise financial decisions affects everything else you do for the duration of your lifetime.Almost half (46.8%) of the U.S. labor force is women. Fewer companies offer a guaranteed pension and even Social Security may not be as secure as we once believed it to be. And, as a woman, you‘re likely to be single at one time or another, due to divorce or the death of a spouse. So understanding financial basics and learning to manage your finances is essential. To do this you need to be financially literate.
The Digital World is all around us. It’s created by the convergence of the virtual and the physical and digital transformation is happening at a dizzying pace. Digital has become so intertwined with our everyday existence it touches almost every aspect of our lives.
The one thing you can rely on in Social Media is that there will be change.
Each year new networks pop up and some go away. The major social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) have been fairly stable for the past five or six years, but that might be about to change -Twitter just reported a dismal Q4 for 2016: 16 cents per share on revenue of $717 million.
As the lines between traditional PR and digital PR blur there are many new avenues for brands to reach and engage with their stakeholders. Many of these opportunities require new digital skills that were previously not part of the PR training regimen.
Digital PR and SEO are traditionally worlds apart. But that gap is disappearing and with the new Google's updates, PR skills could just be the missing link that gets the best SEO results.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald put both his corporate feet in his mouth this week when he suggested that veterans should not complain about the long wait time for an appointment to see a doctor at the VA. After all, said McDonald, people waiting in line at Disneyland never complain. It's not about the wait, he said. It's about the satisfaction of the experience once you get there.
This week's #DigitalPR Twitter chat is all about influencer marketing. How to find the right influencers for your brand or campaign and once you find them, what to do with them.
According to several studies on the problems companies face with content, the top thee challenges are1. Lack of resources and capabilities2. How to create excellent content that gets seen and heard above the noise.3. The need to produce more and more content and still get results. Companies published 35% more content in 2015 than the year before, yet engagement was down 17%.
This week's #DigitalPR Twitter chat on Friday at 1 pm Eastern 10 am Pacific is about the rapid growth of interest in using user-generated content (UCG) as a marketing and PR tactic. A year ago UCG was not even on the list of preferred tactics or content types for marketers. In the recent Content Marketing Institute report 79% of marketers said they plan to use UCG in 2016.
Join the #DigitalPR Twitter chat about visual content this Friday with special guest Victoria Lim. Lim is a visual content expert and the Managing Editor for Public Relations & Editorial Content for Walt Disney World.
This week I happened to visit your website. I was expecting to find a state-of-the-art site with great graphics and an easy user-interface – after all WPP is the world’s largest communication group. For the second consecutive year, WPP topped the Warc 100 annual ranking of the world’s best campaigns and companies. So you obviously have the talent and resources to produce excellent work.But you’d never know that by looking at the homepage of your website.
The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer published this week highlights some trends that are of particular interest to PR practitioners:
It would appear that the corporate pendulum is swinging away from marketing as the place for digital and social media to PR.More than half (51%) of marketing and advertising execs polled in November 2015 said the PR team is best suited to handle social media activity. This is up from 39% in 2013. Only 28% picked the marketing department. (Study by The Creative Group.) This makes perfect sense, since social media is about communicating with and engaging your audience.
As we begin 2016, brands are making plans for how they'll spend their budget. The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs released two reports that show the state of mind of BtoC and Bto B marketers and what keeps them up at night.
Digital PR is a combination of traditional PR, social media, content marketing and search engine optimization. It's PR backed by technology. Digital PR can discover share of voice, brand affinities, opportunities and potential threats and utilize these insights to create an effective content strategy that builds a loyal and engaged audience - it delivers the right message to the right audience in the right place at the right time.
With most of America staying safer at home, the demand for online content has sky-rocketed. There’s been a 22 – 27 percent increase in social media impressions in the last month, depending on the platform.