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02 Feb 2022
Blog, Business Advice, Public Relations Permalink

PR Trends to Watch Out for in 2022

February 2, 2022

PR Trends to Watch Out for in 2022

As we enter a new year, we compiled a list of what we think will be the top PR trends in 2022.

  • Influencer Marketing 

With the pandemic that began in 2020, billions of consumers were forced online and onto social media platforms to stay connected. Public relations specialists have had to follow the trend over the past year. This change in the market is not going anywhere in 2022. For example, TikTok has grown exponentially since 2021 and has enhanced one of the most successful PR trends of 2021: influencer marketing. Social media influencers pick up your brand and promote your products to their followers, whether they have a few or a million. As long as the influencer is trusted, like a celebrity or local radio show host, they could be suitable for marketing purposes. PR experts will need to further research the influencer’s audience to ensure their target market matches the brand’s target market to establish a mutually beneficial relationship.

  • Personalized PR Pitch

Developing a personalized angle for an individual influencer or journalist allows brands to appeal to the individual’s direct interests. With their interests in mind, this approach encourages the subject to pick up the campaign or product because it builds additional trust and credibility between the subject and the brand. Journalists will become more likely to publish, and influencers will want to promote the brand because you offer them what they want.

  • Authenticity Approach

The downside brought with the shift to a more digital market during a global pandemic is the increase in fake news. This drastic increase makes it difficult for consumers to trust any source or brand they see online. Therefore, consumers have developed increased expectations in the authenticity and transparency of brands they usually pursue. It is no longer enough for brands to make statements on their values and initiatives in the eyes of their consumers; they now must actively be making them happen. 

Additionally, being in a more virtual world, new artificial intelligence technologies make PR strategies feel less humanized to the public. Although these technologies may make it easier for brands to reach their target market, consumers lose the “human element” that makes specific strategies feel personalized and authentic. So, in 2022 PR strategies need to emphasize a “genuine” connection to the audience that feels authentic.

  • Be Culturally Relevant

It has always been important for public relations to be top-of-mind, but it is crucial now more than ever to be relevant. The term “cancel culture” has become popularized over the past year. So, it is vital to portray a brand with recent local or global news and cultural values in mind. Consumers tend to put their trust and business into brands that mirror their values. Otherwise, if the brand is seen as negligent or does not match a consumer’s values, it could be “canceled” in the eyes of the consumer. 

01 Feb 2022
Blog, marketing, Public Relations Permalink

How Does Public Relations Support Marketing?

February 1, 2022

The fundamental task of public relations is to connect and build mutually beneficial relationships for a company or brand to the public and the desired target market. In comparison, marketing creates, communicates, and distributes offers of value to the public. The two may seem similar to someone outside of the communications field, but they are fundamentally different and must work hand-in-hand to be most effective.

  • Refine and Amplify

The goal for marketing is to create content and messages to distribute to a target audience. It is then the job of public relations experts to amplify the messaging and refine it to appeal to the target market effectively. For example, say a shoe store claims to have the best shoes with the best deals and centers its campaign efforts around that idea. Alone, that is “salesy” enough for marketing, but from a PR standpoint, there is not much that can be used to create a unique conversation with the public. It would then be the job of PR specialists to take a more creative approach to the subject by creating other engaging campaigns or finding a unique quality of the company to start an engaging conversation with the public.

  • Reach your Target Market

No matter the brand, public relations has a variety of methods to reach a target audience. PR experts know how to define a specific target market and further continue to approach them by taking advantage of the target’s ads and consistently monitoring social media. Public relations experts have access to communication and media outlets and have worked to develop those relations in a way that an average marketing team may not. PR experts are necessary to get the marketing team’s message out to the public. 

  • Build Relationships

A well-developed PR strategy will generate positive media for a brand, increase online traffic, and create demand. Furthermore, positive brand awareness makes it easier for brands to build mutually beneficial relationships. For instance, influencers will want to become involved with a brand if they believe it will positively affect their image.

In addition, a good relationship with an influencer could increase a brand’s social media mentions or product/service reviews, acting as an additional steady source of media coverage outside of the brand efforts.

01 Nov 2021
Blog, marketing, social marketing Permalink

How to Identify Your Company’s Target Audience

November 1, 2021

A target audience is who you intend to focus your message towards to sell your product or service. You can create your target audience based on elements like location, age, gender, or even interests. Learning how to identify your company’s target audience may seem easy, but recognizing your target audience is usually the most challenging aspect of beginning a campaign. Playbook Public Relations offers some advice to determine your company’s target market. 

  • Look at Your Current Customer Base

Defining your current customers is fundamental to understanding the type of people buying your product/service. Your consumer’s age range, gender, income level, education level, marital status, occupation, and ethnic background are some of the first things to identify when figuring out your target audience. Once you have a feel for the demographics and psychographics, you can understand their personality, attitudes, values, interests, lifestyle, and hobbies. This information will help narrow down your target audience if it is too broad.

  • Ask Yourself, “When Will My Consumer Use This?”

Research why and when this specific product or service will be necessary for your audience. Will the product help simplify day-to-day tasks? There is always a need for what you are selling, so make sure you clearly state what that need is. Regulating the type of media your target uses and finding ways to market your brand through that exact social media will aid in the communication between you and the target audience. 

  • Learn From Your Competition 

Check out your competition and compare your target audience to theirs. Find what your competitors are missing to make your brand stand out. Capitalizing on your competitor’s mistakes of overlooking a critical factor in their research can give you a leg-up for your company. 

Once you feel that you have a strong target audience and the characteristics to describe them are concrete, you have accomplished one of the most challenging criteria for your company. The way you engage and the “voice” you use to communicate with your potential and loyal customers will arise from strategically identifying the audience. The rest is simple, so nail down your primary focus and see how well your business benefits after following these tips. 

 

01 Oct 2021
Blog, social marketing, Social Media Permalink

How to Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media

October 1, 2021

Social media experts from Playbook Public Relations explain how to reach your target audience on social media.

Social media can help you reach a broad audience of people all over the world. Navigating these platforms and marketing towards your target audience is the key to a successful campaign. Here are some tips from the experts at Playbook Public Relations to help you target your audience on social media platforms. 

  • Define Your Target Audience 

Your target audience is the group of people that you intend to market towards. It can be as wide as real estate investors or as specific as mothers of teenagers in Tampa who are looking to enroll their kids in sports. You should always have your target audience in mind when creating social media posts. Think…what kind of content would they want to read, what vocabulary do they use, what can I add to the post to make them engage?  

  • Take Advantage of Target Ads

Targeted ads can help you effectively reach your target audience. Ads help to promote your brand or business to those who would be interested in seeing your content. You can target the ads based on the location and interest of your audience. There are many ways to create targeted ads; Facebook, How to Reach Your Target Audience, Instagram, Twitter all give you the opportunity to promote your posts to people who follow you or would be interested in following your business. 

  • Monitor Your Social Media Constantly 

Monitoring your social media on a daily basis helps you to understand what content is working with your clients and what is not. It will help you to tailor the style of your future posts to make sure you are reaching your target audience in the most effective way. Monitoring your social media also means keeping up with feedback and comments from your customers. Paying attention to the feedback your audience is giving you helps to build a strong, authentic connection with your following. There are many platforms to help you accomplish this task. Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Google Analytics are all tools available to help gather all this information into one screen. 

Social media is the future of marketing and PR and it is important to build a strong social media presence in order to help your brand thrive. It won’t happen overnight, but by following these tips you will start to reach your target audience on social media. 

03 Sep 2021
Blog, Public Relations, Social Media, Uncategorized Permalink

What is Earned Media?

September 3, 2021

What is earned media? The PR experts from Playbook Public Relations explain all you need to know about earned media and its importance. Read more.

Your public relations and marketing efforts can pay off nicely when you score earned media. Earned media – also known as earned content, publicity, or organic media – happens as a result of a third party promoting your business or organization. This type of media is not paid for, in contrast to a paid ad, and your actions earn you this type of attention. 

Main Types of Earned Media

Brand mentions and awareness are increased by these types of earned media:

  • Article mentions, quotes or feature stories
  • Interviews (TV, radio, podcasts, and beyond)
  • Public-generated videos
  • Social media mentions, including reviews
  • Word of mouth

Every business touchpoint is an opportunity for earned media, even the traditional word of mouth that still remains as impactful as online or printed mentions. When you make customers or the media happy, the more positive earned media you’ll gain when their friends, contacts, or audience asks who’s top of mind and your name comes up.

Why Earned Media Is Important

When news outlets, influencers, fans, the public, or another third party publicizes you, this increases your stature as an authority and helps brand awareness grow. This helps give you more credibility as your target audiences trust these sources more to believe in your product or service, insights, and branded content. You can reach bigger audiences faster with earned media, but you do not have as much control over what they say. 

Part of Your Marketing Strategy

While earned media does take more work and time to cultivate, it is an essential, major component of a comprehensive marketing and public relations plan. Playbook PR helps clients create relationships with the press and influencers, and these groups can be regularly pitched to so you can get earned media when the message and content is a win-win for everyone. Influencer marketing goes beyond celebrities to connect with industry thought leaders and organizations, target audiences’ leading influencers, and other noteworthy third parties that can elevate your brand online and offline. Mining your LinkedIn contacts is a great place to start to show you who knows who and what shared connections they can introduce you to in an effort to further business relationships.

Attending or organizing events and distributing your content in person or online depending on the event’s format is a great tactic for earned media. Presenting on a topic that will be helpful to event attendees and gain you media mentions helps you go even farther. Pre-show opportunities and social media promotion on the event channels can be a great place to expand your brand awareness through social conversation, email marketing, links, and visuals that elaborate on your key messaging. Be sure to include all your relevant social media handles, hashtags, and links to help keep attendees focused on your top platforms to engage in.

Tap into your fan and advocate base by sharing news with them in tandem with the media, so they know they are VIPs for being loyal to you. Keeping a separate list of these VIPs helps in combination with a media contacts list as this fan list is more apt to share your news word for word and add their positive viewpoint to create even more respect and interest in your brand. Employee advocacy programs can also fit within this category as a low-cost distribution network to share the latest news on their own social media networks.

Get Extra Mileage Out of Earned Media

Plus, when you receive earned media, you can share it with your fans and social media networks to remind them that you are a quality brand and third parties recognize your value. You can also choreograph earned media to get more mileage out of it by:

  • Reprinting the earned media for distribution at events, on displays, or as mailers
  • Publishing snippets of the earned media in blog postings or testimonials
  • Including it in sales presentations or scripts
  • Sharing it on social media with reposts
  • Sharing it in award nomination submissions

Be sure to get permission for any earned media content you want to use to keep the relationship with the third-party above board. Some organizations have republishing or logo use guidelines, so contact the person who first published the earned media to ensure compliance. 

Takeaway

With a great service or product and content worth sharing, it is possible to get more earned media regularly. Working with Playbook PR will help you create engaging, timely content, more social media engagement, and connect you with tools such as social media monitoring to jump in when breaking news or a special event makes your brand even that much more relevant. Like you, we are here to exceed expectations to help your brand get more longevity and success. From media relations to event management and content creation, Playbook PR is known for its comprehensive results-driven campaigns, ROI, and helping your bottom-line results. Contact Playbook Public Relations at (813) 789-7122 or online to elevate your media strategy and brand.

30 Jul 2021
marketing advice, Public Relations, social marketing, Social Media Permalink

Types of Social Media Influencers

July 30, 2021

Public relations experts from Playbook PR break down the different types of social media influencers. Read more on the blog.

The social media ecosystem is a diverse community of individuals that can take your PR to the next level. As part of your marketing playbook, there are different types of social media influencers that you can work with to amplify your brand and goals. Each type of influencer caters to a specific population, so it’s important to have a trusted PR firm by your side to make sense of the social media landscape to help your marketing investment have a better return on investment.

Numerous studies and research show that influencer marketing yields 11 times higher ROI than other forms of digital marketing, according to MediaKix’s Industry Benchmark Survey. For every dollar spent, influencer marketing brings in more than $5 for brands. Most companies invest from $10,000 a year for influencer marketing up to six figures when budgets allow as their survey shows almost 75% of consumers would buy more than $600 from an influencer recommendation.

Dive into the most relevant apps for your brand to find the right types of social media influencers that will help your target audiences connect with your brand in more authentic ways. From the top-down, we’ll explore how each social media influencer type can work to realize your goal.

Mega Influencers

These types of social media influencers are ultra-famous celebrities. With one post, they can provide tremendous reach. These notable individuals can get your brand in front of 10 million-plus people in just one post. When your goal is to get the most awareness possible, mega influencers are worth the mega cost to collaborate with them on a sponsored post.

Macro Influencers

The macro group is the web-savvy social media stars, vloggers, podcasters, and bloggers with 100,000 to 1 million followers. These types of social media influencers create a greater reach for your campaign and often bring deep content creation experience to build unique brand experiences and recognition that stands out from the crowd.

Micro-Influencers

This group of social media influencers can help to truly impact sales, specific results, and increased engagement. As credible sources of expertise in niche topics, brands can find tremendous allies in these types of social media influencers. Niche bloggers, vloggers, activists, and educators are plentiful in this group and drive engagement up to seven times more than the influencers with hordes of followers. The people that follow micro-influencers trust them as highly credible sources and follow their recommendations more often because of their thought leadership.

Advocates

Here, the lead stage of your marketing efforts can take more shape. Advocates begin and jump into conversations about your brand to promote or defend your initiatives. When multiplied, advocates become strong legions who champion your brand and share important details about your services, core values, and key messages. This helps to build brand traction, encourages others to open up about your brand, and activates new fans. Of special note, employees can be a part of this group to help grow a brand’s reach and engagement. Active employee influencers are powerful brand ambassadors, and company cultures can benefit from cultivating this as part of their growth strategy.

Referrers

In every group, there is an essential base of people who recommend websites, brands, and individuals because they have directly experienced the benefits of your product or service. As lead magnets, these types of social media influencers are highly trusted and drive people to follow through on their recommendations. When scaled, this turns into an army of leads carrying out your desired actions.

Loyalists

This bunch sticks with your brand through every up and down. They continue to share and promote your activities and are great for re-energizing your audience as goals take shape. As an active and receptive audience, they are great to help test out different marketing messaging to help your brand be even stronger in the digital age.

Takeaway

Depending on your brand demographics and market segments, social media influencers can help you with everything from exposure, product releases, boosting loyalty, and better ROI. With a results-driven PR firm by your side, your brand can access social media research tools to identify the best types of social media influencers, create high-performing content, sharpen your strategy and monitor your campaigns for success. Playbook Public Relations is known for helping brands to define their influencer PR goals and garnering the right attention for your business. Contact Playbook PR at (813) 789-7122 or online to experience exceptional results with their expertise.

21 Jun 2021
Public Relations, Social Media Permalink

How Do Social Media Influencers Boost PR?

June 21, 2021

PR experts from Playbook PR explain how social media influencers can help boost your company’s brand. Read more on influencer PR on the Playbook PR blog.

Social media influencers have dramatically changed how content and PR can reach your target audiences. The influencer marketing industry will account for more than $15 billion by 2022, according to Forbes. Influencers can now join the largest entertainment industry labor union SAG-AFTRA, and the industry has matured during the last five years from the perception of paid spokespeople to becoming creative partners and content creators with brands of all sizes and shapes. So how can social media influencers help your brand?

Reach Your Audiences Where They Reside

Brand audiences see influencers more as friends than celebrities and provide deeper word-of-mouth marketing than traditional advertising. They create a halo effect that translates from one social media platform to another, creating a synergistic effect that helps to boost your brand exponentially. As an extremely effective form of storytelling, influencer PR helps brands unlock their creative potential by being on the right platform and showing the unique angles that are important to their audiences. 

Think of Adidas collaborating with Beyoncé on her Ivy Park fashion line, Fortnite hosting a concert series with Travis Scott, or the video game Among Us collaborating with New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitch. It’s not always about celebrities with social media influencers, but more about who has the right engagement and followers to help amplify your brand. To build a social media empire, smart brands know that influencers are a pivotal part of a brand’s DNA rather than just a wish-list item. 

Most marketers plan to spend 10% of their budget on influencer PR on Instagram, followed by YouTube, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitch, and Pinterest. Instagram posts and stories are the most effective for influencer marketing, followed by YouTube and Instagram videos, blog and Facebook posts, Facebook videos, tweets, Facebook and YouTube Live, and Twitch live streams. TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Clubhouse, Instagram Reels, Houseparty, and others are emerging as the next round of social media standouts.

Define Your Influencer PR Goals

Increasing brand awareness is the main goal for influencer marketing and reaching new audiences to generate sales is the target ROI. Improving advocacy for the brand, driving and creating leads, and managing brand reputation should be a part of your top objectives too. By expanding your brand’s voice on social media, you can improve customer satisfaction and more earned media opportunities. 

A mix of having the social media influencer post on their own accounts as well as on your brand’s platforms will create an ecosystem that endorses your brand and services or products so that everywhere your audiences turn, they find you in the spotlight. This takes a consistent social media campaign and multiple touchpoints at regular intervals so your brand stays top of mind. As part product placement and part testimonial, an influencer’s connections and followers help a brand have more interactions through comments, likes, and shares.

Find the Right Influencers

Celebrities hold a mystique and tons of followers, but cost a lot of money. Micro-influencers with 1,000 to 50,000 followers are a brand’s best bet as they are experts in their niche areas. They have better engagement with their followers and deeper influence on them than celebrities adored by the masses. Studies have shown that micro-influencers have up to 85% increased engagement with their audiences than influencers with 100,000 to 1 million followers. Micro-influencers’ reviews and recommendations weigh more on purchasing decisions at both local and regional levels. 

Build Relationships with Key Influencers

One-off social media influencing is not a wise investment. Long-term partnerships with key influencers help to educate them on your brand and, in turn, builds deeper layers of trust with their audiences. An influencer’s skills, charisma, and unique offerings help to increase your ROI in a more natural way for audiences. It’s critical to set expectations with the influencer through a contract in advance so everyone is on the same page. Expectations should outline the type of content to be produced, timing of posts, talking points, and preferred content and hashtags for your brand. 

Take the Guesswork Out

By hiring a public relations agency to find, manage, and leverage influencer PR, your brand can continue to focus on daily operations while the PR company is dedicated to making the influencer campaign a success. From research to vetting influencers, coordinating content, and using analytic tools to adjust campaigns in real-time, a PR firm can help you get results faster and more efficiently. 

Contact Us

Playbook PR is here to help brands make sense of the influencer PR landscape and ever-changing social media and marketing environment. Their connections to leading influencers help to build social proof for your brand’s customers and prospects. From creating partnerships to managing content and campaigns, Playbook PR can assist every step of the way with your social media efforts. The agency’s social listening tools, expertise in helping both small businesses and billion-dollar brands, and accomplished team help you to implement more effective social media strategies. Contact Playbook Public Relations at (813) 789-7122 or online to develop and refine your influencer PR strategy to move your company’s goals forward. 

18 May 2021
Branding, Public Relations, Social Media Permalink

What Are the Benefits of Social Media in Public Relations?

May 18, 2021

Find out the many benefits of social media in PR and how it can boost your brand and company. Read more from the PR experts on the Playbook PR blog.

As part of a comprehensive, results-driven public relations strategy, social media is key to keeping your brand relevant and driving ROI. Whether you are in the startup phase, an established business, or want to reinvigorate your company, there are many benefits of social media PR. Let’s dive in and see which benefits you are already seeing, and which strategies an experienced PR and marketing firm can help you accomplish.

Increases Brand Reach

Social media PR is the modern equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing. As you post, share, and network on social media, your brand will connect directly to your target audiences through the strategic use of hashtags, sponsored posts, and more. With engaging, relevant content, your top audiences will share your posts to their networks and help to increase your brand’s reach and follower count incrementally. Making key announcements on social media (think awards, launches, and updates), sharing expertise, and even social media event posting strategies help your brand to show a diversity of content that engages viewers. This also assists in attracting the interest of journalists and the media to learn about your brand and cover it in their publications, multimedia, or TV segments. PR pros will assist you with social media strategies to interact with the media online and get them to present your story angles and interview you for more details.

Builds Trust   

As your brand posts regular, useful content, your messages will get amplified and incrementally build trust. This helps to position your brand as an authority and keeps your messaging at the top of your target audiences’ minds. Beyond your loyal social media base, this facilitates attracting investors, business partners, and collaborators to grow your company. With guidance from a proven PR agency, your brand can work with influencers to exponentially grow your fan and customer base with their networks. Influencers with large digital followings can promote offerings, help your brand’s reputation, and skyrocket visibility for your key messaging.

Shows Human Side of Business

Since social media is more conversational, companies can show more of the behind-the-scenes about their brand and mission in a friendly tone. Instead of being so formal, social media allows for a more warm, approachable, and inviting communications strategy. The key is to keep consistent with this tone to keep your audiences’ trust. As social media is a two-way communication platform, this tone carries over to how your brand engages and interacts with the audience. A social media calendar, style guide, and regular posting strategy empower business owners and marketers to stay in the driver’s seat with their PR. Many companies also use social media to drive social impact. From corporate responsibility programs to charitable causes and beyond, social media assists in raising awareness about causes that matter to your brand and how your audiences can get involved. From hashtag campaigns to other interesting and impactful posts, social media can show the good you are doing in real-time.

Creates Measurable Results

With various social media platforms that your business can use, each has specific metrics that show you how posts, engagement, and more are doing. From these measurable results, you can refine which strategies are working best. PR agencies can help with social listening tools to further understand the social media landscape and how your social media strategies are working. Social media strategies can also be used to convert leads into customers, and your PR agency can help by testing which posts work best for sales, ROI, and other metrics that are important to your brand. From liking a post to commenting and sharing, every positive interaction gets the customer closer to a buying decision. Social media drives inbound traffic to your website and key links to help your buyer advance on the customer and user journey. Search engines also use a brand’s social media presence as a factor in search rankings. With a set of regularly used keywords and hashtags in social media, search engines will rank your brand higher than others who are not actively posting.      

With your competitors most likely also being on social media, other benefits of social media PR include the transparency of what the competition is doing. From competitive research to an analysis of unique offerings and PR angles, brands benefit from seeing what the competition is doing. Likewise, you can see brands that you are inspired by to develop your business’ best practices and potential partnerships that can give your brand a boost. 

Manages Relationships and Threats

In our increasingly connected and vocal world, social media is one of the first lines of defense when public commentary and threats emerge on a brand’s social media channels. From regular monitoring to ensure relationships are being upheld to reacting to threats swiftly, a social media crisis plan is important to have in advance. With the viral nature of social media posts, it’s key to be proactive about brand reputation crises and have spokespeople ready and trained in talking to the media with a PR agency’s guidance. By working with journalists and the media in advance of any crisis, your brand helps set the stage for when an issue does occur so the media shows a more balanced version of what happened.

Increases Affordability of Marketing

Versus ad campaigns in traditional media and billboards, social media PR is an affordable investment of your company’s time and money. With a trusted PR agency to carry out all the fine details on a daily and weekly basis, you can take a lot of the guesswork out of social media PR and marketing. Paid advertising on social media channels is also reasonable and a good way to focus on how you want the social media PR to convert into an ROI. 

Takeaway

A solid social media PR strategy and regular touchpoints can be a gamechanger for your brand, amplifying your message and allowing your brand to speak from a position of strength. Contact Playbook PR at (813) 789-7122 or online to determine the mix of traditional and social media that will work best for your business’ short and long-term goals.

30 Apr 2021
content marketing strategy, Public Relations, Social Media Permalink

What is Social Media PR?

April 30, 2021

What is social media PR? The PR experts from Playbook PR breakdown everything you need to know about social media PR. Read more on the blog.

Business owners have enough on their plate, so we understand when you come to a PR agency to make sense of the social media landscape to develop a more efficient and effective integrated marketing campaign strategy to get a better ROI. In today’s hyperspeed marketing environment where mainstay social media platforms go hand-in-hand with new trendsetting ways to reach audiences, you need a highly experienced social media PR firm to help guide the way.

Social Media PR

Social media PR is all about showing your unique offerings and how this helps the niche audiences that your service or product focuses on. Social media posting topics and calendars that account for regular posting, generating brand awareness, and converting likes into leads and sales will help direct your efforts. Collaborating with a PR agency assists businesses with taking the guesswork out of all the social media strategies that are essential for being relevant on these apps, including hashtagging to tagging, working with influencers, attracting the interest of journalists and collaborators, and beyond.

A choreographed social media strategy creates awareness about your brand on your terms. For example, a marketing campaign can launch with specific story pitches and press releases that allow for social media sharing capabilities, extend to social media posts, convert to media opportunities and speaking engagements, turn into long-form content opportunities – including videos – on company marketing channels and with external online websites and platforms where your target audiences frequent. Social media content categories are key to define for your audiences. Do they prefer more inspirational, educational, conversational, promotional, behind-the-scenes content or a mix of these elements to keep their interest, and your follower counts, increasing?

Content is King

Original, consistent, and branded social media content can be regularly measured and monitored by PR pros to help evaluate refinements, opportunities, and next steps. From customer conversations to media sentiment to guidance on what it takes for a post to go viral successfully, PR professionals know how to harness social media engagement for your benefit. As companies look for creative ways to maximize their marketing investment, some have instituted brand ambassador programs to get company perks for promoting them on social media. For an entryway into the newest social media apps, this can be a smart choice to capture the next generation of customers.

As with any online platform, reputation management becomes an important consideration in your social media PR strategy. It is essential to create a real-time crisis management plan in advance so that your outside PR team and internal spokespeople are on the same page for when this reality does occur. Handling crises swiftly, keeping focused on your company’s core values that can help turnaround the situation, and communicating the play-by-play externally, and giving access to top leadership in social media posts can do a lot to help damage control.

Social media and PR pros are an affordable extension of your team that are dedicated to lifting the burden of the ever-changing social media landscape and regular posting cycles that are essential to keeping your brand’s message at the top of your audiences’ minds. From amplifying your message to creating long-term social media PR plans, the experienced PR team at Playbook Public Relations is known for delivering unprecedented media exposure, captivating social media content, and exceeding expectations for clients. Contact Playbook Public Relations at (813) 789-7122 or online to re-energize your social media strategy.

25 Mar 2021
Blog, Branding, Business Advice, content marketing strategy, marketing advice, Public Relations Permalink

Public Relations vs Advertising: What’s the Difference?

March 25, 2021

Understand the difference between public relations and advertising from the PR experts at Playbook PR. Read more on the blog.

You know it’s time to increase your business’ reach and there are many strategies to execute to not only increase the awareness of your brand but get a better return on investment for your efforts too. Knowing the difference between public relations and advertising, who can help you bring focus to your action items, and when to use each of these levers can make a dramatic difference in your business’ success.

Public relations and advertising can be seen as two-star players in your playbook. PR is earned by making connections in the media and beyond whereas advertising is paid for and targeted to certain niche audiences. Public relations cast a wider net as it helps to create brand awareness and increases your reputation. PR is a solid strategy to build trust for your business because a third party has effectively given you a vote of confidence by taking your effective press release or pitch and then gives you opportunities for an interview, thought leadership article, social media mentions, and beyond. Audiences are more likely to do business with companies they know and admire, and this is where PR helps to build this organically. Since a third party is doing the promotions, you do not control the final result or frequency of the PR.

In contrast, advertising is typically for promoting specific products, services, and deals to key groups of potential customers at a cost, oftentimes for specific buying seasons. Depending on where you place the ad, how long the ad will run, and how much exposure it gets will determine the price. You get more control with advertising from the design, content, and frequency of it running since your business is calling the plays. 

PR is all about storytelling as journalists, reporters, and editors are constantly on the lookout for credible sources to bring their stories to life. Where can your company help them see the big picture, get meaningful information to their audiences, and build their base? When your PR can make these plays, the media will be more open to your unique offerings. A magazine feature, TV segment, or newspaper article can go viral with re-posts, likes, tweets, and emails, giving you a lot of earned media for your effort. The role of media continues to expand with social influencers, industry experts, and other stakeholders becoming key storytellers in your PR efforts.

As public relations efforts increase, search engine optimization can also improve. Backlinks from top-tier websites help to build your credibility online and increased views, clicks, and sales can be measured from your PR efforts too. As others produce content about you and post it online, your business will go up in the search rankings and people will see legitimate external content about you that shows your strengths in the marketplace. Consumers like to see other content than just your website, social media, and digital marketing when they look on search engines.

The difference between public relations and advertising also comes down to timing and effort. When your business needs to make a big splash, has an ample marketing budget, knows what message you want to convey, and you need to act fast, advertising is the best lever to control the message on your terms. Advertising does take effort, but it can be distinguished between an individual ad or a full ad campaign over a set time period. In contrast, PR takes time to build. From building relationships with the media and key influencers and stakeholders to crafting pitches and press releases, PR does take time and effort on a routine, sustained basis to get wins. Many studies have shown how PR prompts more buying decisions since third-party endorsements create more trust in your company with consumers, so the extra time and effort is worth it.

As strategies to help get your business or organization to the next level, the combination of public relations and advertising in your marketing mix will create a more solid foundation. At Playbook, our clients benefit from robust campaigns that include public relations, advertising, digital strategies, social media, influencer relations, strategic alliances, and promotions. Our track record of delivering unprecedented media exposure, expertise in advertising, and serving as an extension of your team is the winning playbook for your business. Contact Playbook Public Relations at (813) 789-7122 or online to re-energize your marketing and brand.

Let Us Create A Winning Playbook For Your Business

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