R Public Relations Firm
9 Fascinating facts about publicists you probably didn’t know
Being a publicist—also known as a PR professional—means you must master various skills, from managing communication strategies to building corporations’ credibility. Publicists are social media coordinators, brand strategists, masters of internal communications, and wordsmiths with a knack for writing. These multi-skilled individuals are in demand by large companies, non-profits, celebrities, and even public figures, as their unique set of skills makes them useful for brand overhauls, crisis management, proactive storytelling, and more. Keep reading to learn more publicists facts so you know what to look for when it’s time to make a hire for your own team.
1. Publicists handle more than just advertising
Contrary to popular opinion, publicists are not the same as advertisers! Advertising is the practice of paying for a certain amount of impressions, clicks, or actions. Publicity, on the other hand, encompasses more than that. Publicists manage overarching communications strategies, which can include but are not limited to pay-to-play advertising campaigns. Successful PR strategies hinge on both paid and organic placements, meaning publicists spend significant time building relationships with media and nurturing stories that reflect their clients’ values and strongest initiatives. Paid advertising is a great way to drive website traffic and conversions, but to build long-term loyalty, organic coverage is also essential.
2. Publicists can build solid relationships with media personnel
Not every story will be a slam dunk on the first try. Occasionally, a publicist’s success will hinge on the strength of their relationships with reporters. Building relationships with overworked reporters is a challenging job. It takes a lot of time and effort, but the payoff is certainly worth it. Organic coverage in top-tier outlets builds unmatched credibility for brands.
3. Publicists can help your business grow in a cost-efficient manner
Publicists don’t require massive advertising budgets to make a difference for your brand. They add value by leveraging their relationships to promote your business on popular media channels, building and adjusting various strategies, and placing authentic coverage about your brand that more effectively spreads the word about your mission than a paid ad. Billboards and out-of-home ad placements cost a fortune, and tracking who’s actually being reached is hard. But a publicist can spend a fraction of that cost on highly targeted media pitching and see similar results.
4. Publicists can help businesses grow at every stage
Another interesting publicist fact is that PR services are designed for businesses at every single stage in their lifecycle, not just for start-ups. Goals might shift from awareness and driving traffic to brand loyalty and targeting specific consumer segments, but the overarching PR strategies can be applied in many ways to support brands both large and small, old and young. Every business needs the help of a publicist to maintain a steady beat of positive coverage and share new and evolving messages with audiences.
5. Publicists possess wide-ranging skills
To see continuous growth in the PR industry, publicists must not only remain proficient in baseline skills like media pitching and business writing, but they must also develop new skills as the times change. In the past several years, this has included learning many social media platforms, adapting to digital publications, learning how to manage virtual events, and getting acquainted with a 24-hour news cycle. All this knowledge means PR professionals can help fill in knowledge gaps at your company so you can focus on larger organizational goals.
6. Publicists manage your story from start to finish
A publicists' work is not finished after they submit your press release or pitch. They manage the process of sharing stories from start to finish. Their core skills help them outline key messages in the form of media alerts and leverage their network to get stories picked up, but they can apply these skills to other communications needs, like social listening, SEO strategy, email marketing, and beyond.
7. Publicists possess incredible persuasion abilities
There are so many products on the market these days! Publicists have a knack for convincing potential customers that their client's products and services are the best in the business. They have honed their persuasion skills for years. They have an exceptional ability to narrow down key differentiators, turn messages into catchy elevator pitches, and find the best placements for each story. Publicists are adept at crafting messages that appeal to specific target audiences’ desires.
8. Publicists often work around the clock
Not every newsworthy event or crisis happens during working hours. That means publicists must be ready for anything at all hours of the day. Hiring a publicist doubles as an investment in your customer service, as you’ll have round-the-clock support for your business. This is crucial in times of crisis, but also extremely helpful to gather feedback in slower times, too.
9. Publicists are always learning
This is a publicist fact that remains mostly unknown. But PR pros tend to get bored when working on one project for too long. Collaboration with all sorts of brands and learning the ins and outs of what makes their businesses and industries tick are both exciting and highly stimulating for publicists who love to expand their knowledge. You can leverage your publicist’s desire to learn more by inviting them to participate in various team meetings and initiatives. You never know—it might spark an idea for your next big story!
I’m ready to hire a publicist. What are the next steps?
The above publicists facts might have you convinced that now is the time to hire a PR pro for your business. But before embarking on the hiring process, clearly define your business’s goals and make sure multiple stakeholders weigh in. Your publicist must have a clear sense of the work you need to be done before building your strategy. If you’d like more info about how a publicist can help grow your business, you can schedule a discovery call and get answers to all your questions today.
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!