Public relations; it’s your tool to help protect, enhance, and build your reputation as a business. As stated over at Forbes, ‘PR people are storytellers…they find the positive messages and translate those into positive stories. When the news is bad, they can formulate the best response and mitigate the damage’, and that my friends, is why PR is your best friend.
So, without further ado, let’s get into the detail as to why PR is the friendship you need. ♥️
Small business owners, this one’s for you:
A best friend…someone who is there for you through thick and thin, who listens to you, is entrusted to you, and is always there to pick up the pieces. As a Small Business Owner or Startup, you’re likely to be all consumed with the production, maintenance and promotion of your product/service so what you need is a support network. This is where PR is your golden ticket, as unlike paid adverting, PR professionals work with ‘earned media’. By being featured in articles, radio shows, interviews, guest blogs etc, your brand will gain credibility, build a relationship with your target audience, and in turn gain new business. 👍
Industry experts listen in:
PR will help to establish you as an industry expert. As the middlemen between businesses and the media, PR will aid industry experts to get their expertise seen. Your PR team will be able to connect your research and work to renowned publications.
It’s simple: you provide the content, we’ll provide the contacts. ✨
Side note: it’s always important to remember that having a best friend is a two-way street.
Your PR team must be provided with the tools they need to successfully promote you to the media. As noted by the Law Gazette: ‘your help [is essential], they’ll need to pick your brains...and develop campaigns on your behalf. If they can’t get hold of you...and the journalist is waiting, this won’t help any of the relationships – or the results.’
So, why would you want to have PR as a best friend?
PR improves you:
Your Public Relations specialist will have many tricks up their sleeve to ensure that your business becomes the best version it can be. As noted in the Princeton Review, your PR specialist is an ‘image shaper’, generating positive publicity for your product/service, enhancing your credibility, and handling the relationship between yourself and the media. The upmost important thing our customers are after nowadays is trust, and as Allie Decker over at Hubspot wisely stated, ‘nothing builds and fosters trust like public relations’.
Why not have a mooch through these examples of what PR will do for you:
🔸 Enhance your online visibility
🔸 Increase your credibility
🔸 Build brand trust
PR protects you:
It’s all very well building up a strong reputation for your brand, yet how do you ensure that it’s not all lost with one mistake? You’ve already guessed the answer, with the help of PR❗️It’s impossible for us to predict or preempt every possible crisis which is thrown our way, therefore one must have a back up plan in place. Crisis Communication is a strand of PR which deals with protecting companies, organisations, and individuals facing a plethora of crises. Your PR team will question whether your crisis plan is ‘truly actionable’ and take steps, such as these seen on Rock Dove Solutions, to ensure that your company will be protected at all costs.
PR expands your horizons:
It’s important to remember that PR is not linear, there are many different types of PR, as well as areas of marketing it can be related to. Your PR team will advise you on the most important types of marketing to focus on. Right now, content and video marketing are both hot topics. 🔥🔥 As noted by the Content Marketing Institute, ‘content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing value, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience- and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action’.
Content marketing includes techniques such as:
🔸 Blogging
🔸 Podcasting
🔸 Video marketing
🔸 Email newsletters
🔸 One of a kind methods
It’s always important to listen to your PR professionals and clue into what the best marketing techniques are to help your brand. By conducting content marketing, your PR team will be able to promote your content and share your creations with the media.
Have a look at these juicy facts before I go:
• 70% of customers were more attracted to developing relationships with companies who provided them with custom content.
• 71% of B2B marketers are using video in their content marketing campaign, with 81% of total businesses investing their time in video.
• 95% of viewers retain a message when they watch it in video form (is this a good enough reason to try out video marketing, I think so!)
• According to Forbes, companies that publish blog posts get almost 3.5x the traffic than companies who don’t.
That’s it from me folks, here’s the rest of our GuidedPR blog for further inside knowledge 😎
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About the Author:
Evie is a published writer, living and working in London. She’s a PR Assistant and Copywriter at GuidedPR. She holds a BA Hons in History from Royal Holloway and has accordingly worked within the culture sector and legal industry. You’ll usually find her scribbling down words in a coffee shop with a flat white in hand.
Find Evie on LinkedIn.
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