Despite the second word in its name, content marketing does not belong only to marketers. Like marketers, today’s PR professionals use infographics, videos, visuals and blog posts, but they do so in different ways and for different goals.
Our white paper “How to Use Content Marketing to Generate Engagement and Coverage” will show you the PR benefits of content marketing and the associated industry best practices. Here’s a an overview of what our latest PR resource covers:
Content marketing with a PR slant
More and more PR pros are required to demonstrate ROI, but a bulk of their work requires them to create deeper interest in their brand and deliver earned media by building awareness, engagement and relationships with the media, influencers, customers and prospects.
Creating entertaining, visually engaging and/or informative content can help meet those goals. Here’s a brief synopsis of what that content looks like.
Entertainment – Your audience typically wants short, pithy content. Instead of text, visuals or video often give your audiences this type of snackable content. Make sharing your content easy across desktop and mobile devices.
Visual Engagement – Using networks like Instagram and Pinterest can help generate awareness and buzz and introduce your brand to a new crop of customers.
Knowledge – How-to information isn’t always entertaining, but it helps prospects who are considering making a purchase. Aim to create shareable content that creates buzz and paves the way for helpful content that drives leads.
Optimizing content for PR audiences
This is an image from Lee Odden’s book “Optimize.”
PR’s audiences include customers, employees, vendors, investors and the media. No single piece of content will reach all of them because each audience has different needs and wants.
Potential Customers – Not only do your prospects have different reasons for considering your product or service, their buying power and consumption preferences vary widely.
How to Optimize for Potential Customers
- Create detailed personas.
- Discover where, when and how your personas seek information.
- Don’t rely on your favorite networks. Publish content where your personas are.
- Measure your content’s effectiveness and find ways to improve.
- Adapt to changes to your personas’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors.
Media – There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to outlets or reporters. It’s practically impossible to create content for each one. However, PR pros can pitch relevant story ideas and content to the right reporters.
How to Optimize for the Media
- Research the traditional and new media outlets that your prospects love.
- Use social media to forge relationships with bloggers, journalists and reporters.
- Follow best practices when you craft and send pitches.
- Use multimedia in your pitches.
- Tailor your pitches to specific outlets.
- Things change quickly. Never stop researching outlets and building relationships.
Content marketing as an ecosystem
When the content you produce doesn’t work together to achieve larger goals, they become less effective. Additionally, you will drag down efficiency by duplicating efforts.
This also requires all the content-producing departments working together to ensure they produce content that maintains consistent branding. Think of your content in terms of an ecosystem and try to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Reduce – Create content that people can easily consume and share. Reducing a quote from a white paper to a graphic will increase the white paper’s shareability.
Reuse – PR content can sometimes be used in marketing and vice versa. Don’t just copy and paste, though. Often revisions are necessary so the content can be used as a guest post or pitched to reporters.
Recycle – If you have an old piece of content that suddenly becomes relevant thanks to a trending topic, a little revision could turn it into a timely piece of content for your target audience.
Want more on how content marketing can aid your PR? Get your free white paper now!
Image: Digital Ralph, Kevin Dooley
