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Content vs. PR?
You’re ready to tell your story in a big way, but you don’t want to spend a fortune on hard-to-measure advertising. What can your brand or business do?
Lots of folks immediately think PR.
They usually aren’t talking about strategic communications — corporate or public affairs campaigns — but getting ink in old fashioned terms. In modern lingo, online articles, videos, social posts, etc. It’s generally assumed PR agencies can do this for you through their active relationships with journalists and now influencers.
Except it’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Why? Misalignment of interests. As all PR pros know but very few executives do, relationships with journalists and influencers can only go so far for that simple reason. Reporters want news, and good news usually isn’t news. If it bleeds, it leads.
What about influencers? Each may have millions of followers, but only a small percentage — say one percent — act on any post. In other words, influencers have the same impact in terms of driving action as a reasonably effective digital ad campaign (although ideally at lower cost per click or conversion). Influencers are also typically more well-suited to partnerships with consumer brands. While B2B influencers certainly exist, they are a rare bird.
So how do companies tell the stories that the press won’t cover? Naturally, you create your own content — defined as written, video, audio and design pieces. The challenge is how you get people to read, watch, view, listen to your company or brands’ insights and ideas. Not just once, but again and again.
Start with an iron-clad rule. Think about what will interest your audience first, and what you want to say second. The goal isn’t to create great original art, but high quality, engaging feature stories, videos and infographics that engage customers, clients, influencers, and, yes, media too.
Because creating content is in essence becoming your own publishers — something brands have been doing since John Deere published The Farrow magazine in 1895–you need a distribution strategy too. While knowing your audiences’ consumption habits will be essential to fine tune your efforts, most successful content campaigns include common elements:
— Content Hub: a place where all your work lives, usually a blog section of a corporate site or more imaginatively a standalone publication. Think the celebrated GEReports or Target’s Bullseye View.
— Subscription: once you get your target reading or watching, ask for their email or mobile number so they can get the latest, on point work via a newsletter, report, etc. Build the relationship with the truly engaged, the crucial 20% of the 80/20 rule.
— Drumbeat: create for the platforms that matter to your audience, from social to podcasts, set up your profiles and commit to a publishing schedule. If you don’t stay with it, why should anyone follow you?
— Amplify: put advertising dollars to work to share your content and generate PR and influencer engagement. The spend is lower and more easily measurable for effectiveness than larger brand awareness campaigns.
If you do it right, combining the control and power of content with smart PR / influencer marketing and cost-effective paid amplification, you will go a long way toward building your business or brand on your terms. That’s independence worth investing in. In the end, it really isn’t about Content vs. PR, but rather putting all the tools at your disposal to work in a way that delivers real results.
