Unique Public Relations Strategies Nigerian Firms Can Use To Build Favourable Brand Image; You Need To Read This If You Want To Specialize In PR

Public relations is a dynamic profession which requires expertise to excel in. If you want to specialize in public relations you really need to understand modern techniques very necessary in building a favourable brand image among the publics. Here’s an interesting piece which will surely open your eyes dynamics of effective public relations in the digital age. See the specific strategies provide by Gini Dietrich posted on StartupNations for building favourable relationship with the publics which you should consider as a public relations practitioner.

 

Blogging

Your company blog is a valuable tool for building a foundation that positions your executives as industry thought leaders. Journalists often look at executive-authored content when evaluating sources and considering whether or not to include your company in their coverage.

Go beyond product-heavy promotional content and use your blog to share relevant and helpful content that helps your ideal customer be successful in his or her job or life.

Build relationships

Would you walk up to a journalist or an industry influencer at a party and start giving them your elevator pitch? That’s wouldn’t be a good idea.

It’s important to build relationships with journalists and social media influencers, based upon being helpful to them and the pursuit of their goals, long before you pitch them stories about your business.

Here’s how to get started: identify the top journalists, bloggers, industry analysts and thought leaders who influence your customer-buying decisions. Search for them on the key social media platforms you are focusing on, and follow them there. On Twitter, create an influencers list and add them to it. Not only will that make it easy for you to see what they’re sharing and talking about, it’s a solid first social interaction with them.

Social media interaction and engagement

Your social channels present a unique opportunity to connect directly with influencers and fans to build a relationship with them over time.

Amplify content shared by your influencers (here’s where that influencer Twitter list comes in handy) by liking and re-sharing it in your social channels, and engaging them in conversation on the topic or around a key point they raised in their content.

Use social listening tools such as Social Mention and streams in Hootsuite to track mentions of your brand and respond to those brand fans.

You can also add your expertise (but not a hard product sell) to relevant conversations.

articles

Bloggers and journalists spend a lot of time on the content they publish. Let them know what new insights you gleaned from them, pose a question, or share a follow-up on one of their points.

This is a great way to share your expertise and get a conversation started on topics you’d eventually like to be part of a more formal conversation on.

Email marketing

Those who think that email is dead are infact, dead wrong. It is not!

In fact, research from Salesforce found that 95 percent of people who have opted-in to receive email messages from a brand find these messages somewhat or very useful.

A regularly scheduled email newsletter is a good way to build and nurture customer and prospect relationships over time and provide influencers with a low-key way to keep apprised of what your company is up to, without the threat of dreaded PR pitch cold calls.

Sponsored posts

Give your best content the opportunity to go beyond your current fans and followers by allocating a budget to distribute it through sponsored social media posts.

Create audience segments on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook that closely resemble your target customer and promote your posts to those audiences.

Integrate social advertising with media relations

When your company finally gets that awesome media mention or is included in a key analyst report, there’s a lot more you can do in addition to sharing it with your existing social media followers.

You can—and should—use paid social advertising to drive additional readers to that media coverage, and ultimately to your company website.

On Facebook, you can take it one step further by using your social advertising to target warm prospects with these ads (people who have visited your website) by using the pixel on your website.

Source: startupnation