In September, we held a series of webinars focused on ‘The Power of Messaging’. We kicked off the series with the question “What is PR, and why should I care about it?”, discussing how you can reach the right target audience through carefully crafted messaging, the importance of trust, internal communications and reputation management. This blog will touch on the questions that were asked during the webinar. If you want to download and watch the full episode that goes into much more detail, you can do so here.
How do you know what is PR worthy and what to share internally and externally? Is it just a matter of messaging?
This all goes back to knowing your audience, which we can’t stress the importance of enough. If you know your ideal customer and what they’re interested in, then that’s going to really help you decide what’s newsworthy and what’s actually worth talking about. Once you have those in place, ask yourself, does the story that you want to share fit with the strategic messages you’ve created?
What are the three core takeaways from your communication? This was spoken about in the webinar, and it’s something to consider before you share anything. What’s the end goal? And what are you going to get out of it? This applies both externally and internally. If you don’t have any objectives, then it’s probably not newsworthy!
With internal communications, it is always good to release the communications to your team shortly before you release it to your external audience. This ensures that your team members aren’t caught off guard.
How do you measure PR, and the new business you gain from it?
Some easy ways that you can measure if your PR has been successful is to check if there is an increase in site traffic. You’d expect to see a spike and through digital PR, you can also track directly where that’s coming from. So, if you’ve had some news published on a website or a blog, you can use Google Analytics to see how much traffic you’ve had and from where.
Another measurement is search visibility – how many times people are searching for your business or related search terms on search engines. You should see that increase as well, because you should hope more people are talking about you and looking for you online if your PR programme has been successful.
Social media engagement is another metric to monitor – as mentioned in the webinar, social media is also a valid form of PR. You should expect to see more engagement on your channels, which includes more people talking about you on social media, liking your posts, interacting with you and following you.
In terms of new business, you would expect to see an increase in leads and enquiries from your PR strategy. To measure that, you can set up goals on Google Analytics, which is talked about further in the digital marketing webinar you can download and view here. Another really simple form of measurement is to just ask people how they heard about you.
You can measure PR more now than ever before, with so many statistics helping you find out if something is effective or not. Even just a few years ago, people weren’t really measuring the impact of PR, hearing the phrase ‘well you got on TV, surely that’s good enough?’ far too often!
Your PR activities will be successful, if you follow all the tips we’ve given you, providing you with an increase in leads and enquiries.
When you talk about internal communications, how do businesses deliver internal communications effectively and what tools can they use?
There are tools scalable depending on the size of the business. Larger businesses might have a sophisticated social intranet system especially for their employees – sort of like a company wide Facebook. Here, the employees can get their necessary updates and news, and can interact with it in real time.
This is not practical for every single business; you might be just starting up, or you might be a medium sized business. But regardless, internal communications are equally as important. Never underestimate the impact of an email from a Managing Director, department lead, or even speaking to the team yourself.
What is important with internal communications is to stay consistent, stay simple, and always, always communicate with humanity.
When running social media campaigns, how would you include PR into the strategy?
Social media campaigns are part of your PR strategy, so when you are putting together a strategy and you have gone through your ideal customer and your strategic messaging, you need to look at how to reach them. If your ideal customer exists on social media, Instagram, Twitter, or wherever other channel may be relevant, then you would create social media campaigns that include your strategic messages and your story that are targeted at your ideal customer on these platforms.
Additionally, any coverage you gain in publications or news sites should be showcased on your relevant social media platforms as it is a great way to show off your news, gather social opinions and spread your story.
Got a question that wasn’t answered or want to know more about our PR service offerings? Get in touch with us here and check out our PR services page to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.
For access to the full webinar, download it for free here.
