R Public Relations Firm
Challenges of PR in the Digital World
The Public relations (PR) industry, like so many others, has evolved and changed dramatically since the dot-com boom. Today’s PR pros face challenges, including an ultra-fast news cycle, round-the-clock media coverage, and reputation threats in every corner of the internet. Read on for today’s top challenges of PR, as well as how your company can deal with them with the help of a well-equipped PR team.
1. The 24-Hour News Cycle
In the past, broadcast news ran for a handful of hours each day. Now, the news is on 24 hours a day, meaning there’s a constant flood of information entering households across the country. The news is on when you wake up with your baby at 5:00 a.m. and when you’re running at the gym at 8:00 p.m. This information overload can make it very difficult for your brand’s story to stand out from the crowd.
2. News Travels Fast…Very Fast
The virality of certain social media posts, videos, and images is great for global knowledge-sharing, but it is also one of the major challenges PR professionals face today. One negative review, which previously could have been dealt with one-on-one with the reviewer, now must be managed immediately or risk it going viral and causing irreparable damage to the company.
It goes without saying, then, that speed in PR is now of the utmost importance. Having a team of multiple individuals working on your company’s brand management at all times helps keep minor issues from spiraling out of control, especially on social media.
3. Crisis Management in the Age of Social Media
One of the major challenges of PR in the modern landscape is the need for real-time crisis monitoring. Disgruntled customers can reach you on your website, by telephone, by email, and across dozens of social media platforms. It takes more than a few hours a week to effectively complete social listening and ensure your customers are happy with the products and services you’re providing.
In the digital age, every brand must plan for the inevitable crisis to occur. Even if the issue is small-scale, a PR team can help you outline a crisis communications strategy and draft some boilerplate statements. You’ll also want to make sure your entire team knows who in the chain of command to escalate crises to when the time comes. Crisis communications used to be a problem for only the largest, most powerful companies, but due to the digital revolution, that is no longer the case.
4. Responsive Web Presence
Today, it’s the norm for people to get their news, check social media, connect with friends and family, and sometimes even work primarily from their phones. As such, it’s more important than ever for brands to have a responsive web presence.
A responsive webpage will automatically reformat itself to fit the size of any phone, tablet, or computer, meaning important information and photos won’t be cut off if the user isn’t viewing the site from a desktop. While it sounds simple, this requires some complex backend support and the keen eye of a PR professional to ensure your assets will look perfect on any type of screen.
5. Information Availability
Perhaps your company, when under the purview of a different management team, made some rash decisions. Or maybe a tweet went up a decade ago that was swiftly taken down due to its accidentally insensitive nature. It’s no longer simple to brush historical mistakes under the rug, as every brand has a digital footprint that can’t be erased. Information is readily available to everyone on the internet, and you simply can’t assume past mistakes will be allowed to lie dormant forever.
Undoubtedly, to tackle this challenge, PR teams can work with brands to hone a strategy rooted in honesty and authenticity. Brands must set aside pride and apologize for past mistakes or risk dealing with worse PR crises—and losing brand loyalists to competitors—down the line.
6. Clickability is Key
Whereas newspaper and magazine editors once made content decisions based on the information they felt their audiences most needed to know, now advertising dollars and click-through rates reign supreme. Clearly, PR pros must learn to position stories according to their “clickability.” Will the headline drive clicks? Is the subject line catchy? Is the topic highly relevant to the publication’s audience?
7. The Slow Decline of Print Journalism
PR teams have grappled with a decrease in actual print publications to pitch. Nevertheless, compressed demand for earned media in print publications and a dwindling number of reporters means competition is fierce in the current PR landscape. In order to face this challenge of PR head-on, PR teams must be highly adept at parsing out the most important and engaging stories for brands to highly-targeted outlets—a far cry from the wide-reaching PR strategies of the past.
All of these PR challenges are overwhelming for my small team. How should I decide which to prioritize?
We recommend developing a crisis strategy first. Look for helpful templates online, or engage a PR firm to help with the process—some even specialize in crisis management. From there, tackle PR challenges in the order in which they will have the most significant potential impact on your brand. For example, a responsive webpage can maximize sales, while a social listening strategy can improve customer relations. Thus, figure out your greatest business needs and go from there.
R PR Firm offers a wide range of services to help you face PR challenges head-on and thrive in their wake! From earned media pitching to comprehensive social media strategies, R is available to help your team tackle whatever comes your way. Contact us to schedule a call.
9 Reasons your Business Needs PR Consulting
There are functions of any business deemed essential – accounting, human resources, sales – and then there are functions that far too many believe unnecessary. Public relations (PR) is one of them. That’s a mistake businesses often don’t realize until they’ve spent valuable time and money only to achieve lackluster results. For example, Forbes cites a study from Nielsen commissioned by inPowered that concluded that PR is almost 90% more effective than advertising. But PR is a specialized skill set often confused with marketing. However, the two are very different, which is why lumping PR in with the responsibilities of your marketing team isn’t always the best choice. On the other hand, outsourcing PR consulting can be a game-changer. Here’s why.
Why Your Business Needs PR Consulting
1. Shapes Your Reputation and Message
When your business is presented in a positive light through outside sources versus direct communications from you to the customer alone, it does wonders to improve your brand’s reputation. That’s why relationships with the media and influencers are so important. Cultivating and maintaining those relationships is a key component of PR consulting.
What’s more, your customers need to be aware of your business’s brand positioning and the benefit and value of your product/service in a way that resonates with them consistently. PR can help you relay those messages effectively across multiple channels.
2. Drives Awareness
Your target audience can’t buy your products or services unless they know about them. That’s why driving awareness is so vital to businesses. Having direct media contacts is the key to ensuring your message is shared in the right places at the right time. Unfortunately, most businesses neither have the time nor the expertise to cultivate and maintain these relationships. However, PR consulting firms do!
Another part of driving awareness is staying relevant to your audience. A business only has so much news to share. But PR consulting firms stay on top of trends and opportunities to pitch your brand in a way that’s relevant to what’s going on in your industry, with your target audience, and in the world.
3. Boosts Credibility
Consumers don’t take businesses at face value anymore. They ask questions and want to know your brand before buying. In fact, Edelman's Trust Barometer found that 70 percent of consumers say trusting a brand is more important today than in the past. What’s more, 53 percent agree that trusting the business behind the brand is the second most important factor (only to price) when purchasing.
As such, PR consulting that helps you to be featured in the media, trade publications, and/or by trusted influencers will boost your credibility (and, as a result, trust) in a way that no advertising and direct communications from you can.
4. Reaches a Wider Audience
Most businesses don’t have unlimited budgets, and advertising is costly, particularly when it comes to national campaigns. On the other hand, a PR consulting firm has the expertise to help you reach a wider audience with earned media. However, this organic coverage is harder to achieve on your own without the right media connections.
Another benefit of earned media coverage is that you may receive news mentions introducing your business to new audiences that you’ve never considered before!
5. Gives You an Edge over Competitors
As mentioned above, PR isn’t often seen as necessary because it doesn’t directly drive sales in the way marketing does (although it does indirectly by driving leads). And while competitors are ignoring those top-of-the-funnel activities and trying to figure out how to stretch their limited marketing budget to attract more interest, those who are proactive about PR enjoy a robust funnel of leads. This, in turn, gives your business an edge by allowing you to focus marketing on increasing sales conversion.
6. Enhances Online Presence
You may not realize that PR and SEO have similar goals, including brand awareness. For example, high-quality backlinks from credible media sources (or influencers) can help your website move up higher in search results which drives more organic traffic. Brand mentions as a result of your PR consulting efforts can also help you rank higher for specific keywords in Google as well, particularly local brand mentions.
7. Generates More Leads
Again, if you think of the sales cycle as a funnel, PR is at the top, where awareness, credibility, and engagement are cultivated, versus the bottom of the funnel, where the sale is closed. Marketing can only do so much at the top of the funnel for several reasons: budget limitations and the resulting reach limitations, not to mention lack of staying power.
Once an ad or campaign has run its paid course, it’s done. Whereas those news mentions have legs, they can be found long after publication. So, PR drives lead in the short and long term, consistently generating more leads overall.
8. Attracts Investors and Brand Partners
PR consulting can help your business get in front of VCs and other investors in a way that increases your credibility. It helps them learn about your brand as a potential investment option. PR can also help you find brand partners by raising awareness among those with complementary products and services.
9. Effective Crisis Management
Crises can and will happen. Whether it’s a problem with your product/service, an issue in the industry, or some unforeseen event. In these circumstances, your PR consulting firm’s crisis management strategy is vital in helping you quickly share information, address the impact on your customers, and let them know how you’re remedying the issue(s).
A good PR consulting firm can also help you to identify any potential vulnerabilities proactively, too.
How Do You Choose the Right PR Consulting Firm?
To ensure the PR consulting firm, you choose is a fit for your brand, industry, budget, and goals, ask about their specialty, clients, whom you’ll work with daily, their working style, and how they measure success.
To learn more about PR consulting, contact us to schedule a call!
