Harnessing digital PR: Leveraging online platforms for business growth
A strong digital PR strategy is quite essential these days. It is no longer just an option as it has become the key to build brand awareness. It helps in shaping brand perception instantly. It fosters credibility and establishes meaning relationships with tour target audience. It also helps in creating compelling content and develop various strategies that will foster your communication goals and pushes your brand forward.
In this blog, we shall discuss about the ways to harness the power of online platforms.
Understanding Digital PR
There are two types of PRs namely Traditional PR and Digital PR. Traditional PR comprises of fostering brand awareness through offline media such as newspaper articles, editorials etc. On the contrary, Digital PR uses online platforms to create brand awareness and to improve the perception of people towards the brand. Digital PR encompasses influencer marketing, content creation, social media platforms, websites and many more.
Advantages of Digital PR
- With the digital platform, you can connect widely without any kind of geographic boundations i.e. digital PR will help you to connect with consumers globally.
- Using the digital platforms and various tools, you will be able to cater the interest of your audience. By targeting the interest of the consumers precisely, your message will be delivered to the most relevant people.
- Nowadays you can find various tools which will keep a track record of the impact of your campaigns related to digital PR and make strategies when needed.
- Digital PR is much more cost effective than that of Traditional PR. Any consumer can avail it.
Setting Digital PR Goals
- Establish yourself as a thought leader and focus on enhancing your brand recognition.
- In order to lead towards an enhanced sales or leads, you should focus on driving more consumers to your website.
- Focus on attracting potential customers and note their contact information in order to make further marketing efforts.
- Through product launches or by applying special offers, influence sales directly.
Who is your audience?
Once identifying your goals, you need to know about your target. You should focus on creating a detailed profile of the consumers you want to reach or approach. Know all the necessary details such as location, age, income, interest, online behaviour and many more.
- In order to relate with the needs of your audience and their preferences, you should make your content and communication style through which your audience can relate with. Like: The Gen Z kids respond better to the humorous content on social media platforms where as other professionals prefer in depth analysis.
- It is equally important for you to select a platform where you get the widest reach. There are plenty of platforms that can be used such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and many more.
Stage One: Build a strong online appearance
In this era of digitalisation, a strong online platform is required so that the customers can know about your brand. A website is quite mandatory as consumers can explore through your website and thus it will increase your brand awareness as well as sales.
Website is the first platform which is able to attract its potential customers. Therefore, it is required for the website to be user-friendly and it should have a clear navigation. It should not take more time to load contents. It should be sufficient enough for its consumers to cater with high-quality content and thus will keep its consumers engaged.
Authenticity, credibility and trustworthiness are the keys to make your website informative. You should build trust with your audiences and influence them to do business with you. You should be able to understand customers needs and make the contents which favours them. Website can be a powerful tool for sales and leading generation.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter etc provide the opportunity to connect with your audience, build brand communities and share your content. In order to increase brand awareness and establish strong customer relationships, all you need is to engage your consumers through your content, relevant communication and interaction with the audience.
In order to attract more followers, you should focus on making the content which is informative and of high-quality so that it can resonate with your audience. There can be various forms of content including videos, blog posts, e-books, infographics, white papers. When you will provide informative and relevant content consistently then you will be able to establish yourself as a thought leader in your respective field. Then you can focus on increasing the website traffic and driving sales.
Stage Two: Create the contents which are newsworthy
Your brand will become a source of valuable information when you will focus on newsworthy content. It will help you in engaging your audience and also attracts the attention of media. Your content should address the current trends, different perspectives and industry insights. A valuable media placement will help you in enhancing credibility and brand awareness. There are certain content formats which may help to achieve your desired goal such as press release, data-driven research, social media posts, creative campaigns, social media posts. By adopting these methods, you can put emphasis on anything which is newsworthy and is a great way to engage your audience.
Stage Three: Building relationships with influencers and journalists
In order to convey your brand message and to get a wider reach, it is quite important to build relationships with journalists and influencers. Media is considered as the fourth pillar of democracy. People trust media and follow them. Your brand awareness can be established by a positive endorsement from these influencers or media personalities for your brand.
It is trustworthy and able to generate significant exposure. It is even able to establish you in the industry. Building relationships with journalists allows you to share your valuable insights with them. Influencers have a huge following. Thus, they can help you in establishing your brand awareness and even change the way people think about a certain brand just through a recommendation. It is always advisable to make partnership with them to gain a significant brand awareness. But you can not approach them without proper research as you need to understand their audience, expertise and content.
Stage Four: Enhance your reach through social media platforms and online communities
In order to enhance your digital PR efforts, you are required to spread the power of social media platforms and other online communities. By using hashtags and other strategic posting, share the newsworthy content across the social media platform. By utilising paid advertising option, as offered by the social media platform, allows you to target the audience precisely and hence will enhance your reach.
Try to engage with your audience by responding to their comments and messages on the social media platform. It shows the 2-way communication and builds relationship with your audience. You can also conduct the ‘live Q and A session’ to address your audience directly. It will enlarge the engagement of audience.
You can also run certain campaigns which motivates your audience to create and share the contents which are related to your brand. It creates a sense of community. You can also acknowledge your followers who are consistent about sharing your content. You can also collaborate with micro influencers who had a wide reach.
Their recommendation will be quite effective in building trust for your brand. You should actively participate in the relevant topics which is going nowadays and you can share your expertise, conduct question answer session and engage in discussions with your followers to establish yourself as a leader. You can also host ‘ask me anything session’ in the online communities so that you can directly address the industry specific questions and deliver your knowledge to the targeted audience.
How to keep a track record of your digital PR success
Nowadays there are various measures to keep a track record of your digital success. There are certain social media platforms which allow you to keep a track record of the matrix for example follower growths, engagement rates, click through rates and reach of your post. By keeping the record of this data you can understand the likeness of the content.
It will give you an idea of the content which your audience is liking hence you can know the content which resonates with your audience and deliver it more effectively through your social media platform. There are certain tools like GA4, which is essential in order to monitor the website traffic. You can keep a track record of things like website visits, users’ engagement session, referral sources and the time spent on the site. It will give you valuable insight into the behaviour of your audience and you can also know the effectiveness of your content
Conclusion:
There are various brands in the online platform but it is only the PR strategy which makes a brand differ from the another one. PR strategy is definitely an effective weapon in today’s era which guide you to build brand awareness tooth and its credibility. By implementing all these strategies, you can control your narratives and build strong relationship with your audience and hence it will help you in achieving your desired PR goals.
