PR and Content Marketing are disciples offered by Anicca as part of its digital marketing support offer. During the Leicester Digital Live Conference in February, we introduced what PR is, what Content Marketing looks like, and how the two work effectively together.
Defining PR
According to the UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations, PR is: “the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics”.
Including the word ‘reputation’ as the first definition of PR is intentional by the CIPR. Enhancing, maintaining and managing a brand, businesses or even an individual’s reputation, both proactively and reactively at times of issue or crisis, is key to PR. So Public Relations is all about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.
It is also used to influence, to achieve support for a cause or objective, in a planned and sustained way, targeting specific groups, audiences or ‘publics’.
Defining Content Marketing
The Content Marketing Institute’s definition has some similarities to the CIPR’s positioning, with sustained outreach and a clear focus on audience (publics) being just two overlapping areas:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action”.
Content Marketing uses engaging content, which is relevant and distributed to the right audience, to trigger conversion – or sales – as effective customer outreach.
Blending the two
The similarities between PR and Content Marketing bring a natural marriage of the two disciples together, and at Anicca Digital, both sit in one area to ensure clients benefit from a focused and joined up approach. Whilst PR ultimately looks to enhance – and maintain reputation – there is no doubt that ‘column inches’ or article clicks will influence sales, a clear objective of content marketing. Using both will enable consistent storytelling, which is on brand and tailored, plus you can define who’s going to see it! Importantly, both support the wider business marketing functions of SEO, PPC, Search and Paid.
Finally, both are a cost of way of digital marketing. Utilised in the right way, they amplify reach, can increase brand awareness and drive demand of a product or service. PR is an effective way of building thought leadership, particularly with influencers, and can create brand loyalty through diving credibility.
The blended approach in action
There are four distinct ways that the approach can be delivered:
1.Promoting Content
PR is an effective tool to push content, allowing you to get your content in front of your publics, whether they be Influencers, Journalists or Bloggers. This results in press coverage, social shares and increased online reach.
2.Relationship Building
The objective of PR is to build two-way, beneficial relationships with your publics. Effective PR (through great content) helps create new partnerships and targeted relationships, which is especially relevant for influencers.
3.Thought Leadership
LinkedIn is a core thought leadership tool, enabling an individual or brand to share opinions and direction through content. This can be in the form of white papers, surveys, long-form articles and research.
4.Digital
We live in a digital era and PR is no exception! Thanks to a range of electronic distribution tools – including email, Twitter and WhatsApp, news can be sent quickly to the press. However, to be effective, brands need a strong online presence to stand out – which is where content (SEO/keyword optimisation) comes into play.
Making an impact
Some of the ways to identify PR and Content Marketing techniques are through press release distribution (and what the outcome is of the news being delivered); blogs and the subsequent sharing of the content; email marketing; website FAQ’s and product descriptions; video (i.e., content shared on YouTube); infographics; white papers and research.
Learn more about Content Marketing in our resource area or get in touch with the team to learn how we can support your business with PR and Content.
Amy Hayward-Paine presented “Introduction to PR & Content Marketing” at Anicca Digital’s 6th Leicester Digital Live #AskAnicca Conference on 16th February.
You can watch the replay below:
