Creating high quality content is the best way to interact with your target audience. You want to focus on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content. Public relations (PR) is about influencing and engaging with your target audience to build a trusting relationship between key stakeholders across numerous platforms to shape and frame the public perception of your business. Include PR into your content strategy to amplify your content. This will help your content reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness, improve E-A-T, and generate consumer demand for your product or service. What are other ways you can use PR to boost your content? Here are 5 additional ways PR can support your content:

1. Use PR to Facilitate Content Promotions

Reach out to relevant journalists, editors, influencers, bloggers, or other media outlets with your content. Your content should be data-focused, but emotional enough to connect with the average consumer. This should lead to more sharing among social media, increased media coverage, and a wider audience that may include merging complementary industries. A study by ON-Broadcast, a broadcast specialist agency, showed that many journalists admit to finding stories on social networks or other media outlets. This means that reporters could possibly pick up your story when you distribute your content across different channels. Consider looking out for guest posting opportunities on reputable websites. Having regular articles and press mentions will amplify your reach in the long term.

2. Use PR to Build Relationships with Influencers

PR is more than just sending a single inquiry email and hoping to get more eyes on your content pieces. It is about building and nurturing mutually beneficial relationships. The better your PR, the easiest it gets to attract new partners, which is a valuable asset when using influencer marketing. An influencer has the trust of their audience and to keep that trust, they try to work with companies that are reputable. Create an influencer strategy built on honest reviews of your product or service. Make sure your content is clear and easy to understand. If the influencer created the content, check that their work doesn’t have any misleading information. After that, enjoy a steady stream of media coverage, co-branded content, social media mentions, and product or service reviews. 

3. Use PR to Help You Become an Industry Authority 

Public relations help you increase authority through speaking engagements, interviews, media coverage, or social media presence. Keep an eye out for local tradeshows, community events, or schools hosting a career day. Allow your employees to build personal brands and share industry insights or news under the company name. Also allow individuals within your company to become thought leaders by publishing insightful content pieces, such as industry reports or expert commentaries. This not only will build the creditability of your company but will show your employees that they are valuable members of the team. Potential clients will feel more at easy if they see real people interacting with the company. 

4. Use PR to Improve Your Online Visibility 

Proactive PR and reactive PR are two ways to approach improving your online presence. Proactive PR involves sharing content with the public in the forms of research and press releases being published on high-ranking high authority websites. Press releases are usually distributed by PR specialists or via newswire services, but you can easily send them out yourself with dedicated PR tools or with the help of a digital marketing agency with SEO services. The goal is to create buzz around your brand and become “findable”. You want journalists and potential customers look for information through Google Search and have you pop up in an ad, snippet, or the first or second page of Google’s results page. 

Pair proactive PR with reactive PR which involves responding to journalists’ needs. There are all sorts of new platforms from local to international online magazines or news companies. Once you find a suitable outlet to share your content, make sure to answer fast and personalize your pitch, depending on the media outlet and its requirements. This PR tactic helps to build quality backlinks and drive traffic to your business’s website.

5. Use PR to Leverage New Communication Channels

Create an online newsroom or company blog is an important communication channel for PR specialists and content marketers. You can use it for publishing press releases, in-house announcements, messages from the founders, or other newsworthy stories your company may have. Unlike traditional media coverage, this is where brands control their own story entirely and decide what to make public. Having an online newsroom or creating a company blog via WordPress will add a sense of legitimacy to your website. It will also make it easier to nurture media relationships and help you manage your online reputation on your own. This shared desire for PR and content marketing is an excellent way to manage and improve your brand’s online reputation. A better reputation equals a higher chance a potential client will pick your business over another’s. 

Need help incorporating PR into your content strategy? Call 248.528.3600.