Whether marketing surgical devices or craft beer, you may be wondering why competitors are fast becoming the go-to subject matter experts in key industry media channels.
Is it perhaps their good luck, charisma, great PR – or something more?
Whatever the case, before your boss starts asking why the opposing team is getting so much more buzz, you need to do a competitive analysis to stay ahead of the game.
It won’t take long to notice what’s often lacking: A thoughtful strategy that integrates PR with blogging and social media to consistently communicate your news, mission, values and quality, all of which build and reinforce brand loyalty.
For example, you can crank out just as many press releases as the competition. However, if you’re not reinforcing that message through a blog plus Facebook and Twitter, you’re losing opportunities to tell your story to distributors, consumers, fans and even journalists.
Start Integrating PR with Content Marketing
The fix doesn’t have to be complicated, but it will take some time. And you will have to commit to building a better presence through consistent messaging across all channels. Examples include:
- Start a blog on your company web site. It’s a dirty little secret that blogging is actually quite easy. This is a tool to write about the themes and subjects that strategically tie in with the products and services that you promote via PR for any given month.
- Research your audience profiles. A press release may work for broad audiences, but you can use a blog and social media to communicate key messages to the buyer personas that matter most for a specific campaign.
- Link blogs to your social media strategy, so you can get in the habit of posting the blog and promoting it on Twitter and Facebook regularly.
- Start small by incorporating at least one blog per month into your existing editorial calendar. This often inspires new ideas. You can even repurpose press releases or turn a blog into a press release.
- Follow similar blogs on social media and then engage and share content with the thought leaders in your industry. You’ll find that you will want to provide useful industry information via blogs, tweets and Facebook.
Try New Things to Adapt
Say your company has already tried blogging but, for whatever reason, the project died on the vine. Perhaps the first effort came to a halt when priorities were shifted or maybe the marketing and PR teams were too busy to write a blog consistently.
Maybe it was outsourced to a company that didn’t take the time to understand your vision and strategy.
All of these scenarios can turn off PR professionals to content marketing. But remember that PR is not always easy. You often have to change and adapt until you get it right. Content marketing is the same way.
In this day and age, the PR pros who do both well are the ones helping to generate the buzz for the competition. You want to be seen in as many channels as possible if you expect to be at the right place and time in the buying cycle.
A well-oiled and integrated communications strategy is often the difference between good PR and great PR that contributes to the bottom line.