3 Content Marketing Tips That Can Enhance Public Relations Efforts

The roles of public relations and marketing are becoming increasingly integrated. There is no doubt that the future of public relations is evolving, and PR pros that don't take advantage of content marketing strategies will be left behind.  Here are few simple content marketing tips that can help boost PR efforts.

1) Use Multi-Media to Enhance PR

Visual Media is one of the year’s biggest content marketing trends. So its time to put those text only press releases to bed, because as much as consumers are influenced to respond to visual media, so are journalists and bloggers.  These editors, writers, bloggers, producers, etc. realize that their readers are going to be inclined to spend more time with features that use cool images and videos. The media is also realizing that the presence of this kind of visual content marketing, will help guide more consumers to their articles through visual search. According to study conducted by PR Newswire, it reveals that multimedia material plays a big role in the extent to which readers engage with a company’s press release online:

• Page views can jump from 14 percent for a text- only file, to a more than 20 percent for a files that’s been visually optimized. 
• If you add imagery and video along with your press release, or even additional files like PDFs and audio clips, you could see between a 48-77 percent increase in views to your announcement. 
• Using multimedia can increase the amount of times your press release is shared from .99 times per hour to 3.5 times per hour. 

Bottom line: if your business goes beyond text and a simple company logo to include more dynamic visuals in its press releases—you will certainly see a significant effect on their impact and reach.

2) Optimize All PR Content

All the content that PR pros produce can be optimized for both search (basic SEO keyword linking strategies) and social (ensuring that content is easy to re-post on Facebook or re-tweet on Twitter).  When you optimize all your content, it makes finding, sharing and digesting content as easy as possible for your audience. Even your media coverage can be optimized by asking a journalist or blogger to include links to your client’s website.  Sometimes they might say no, but for the most part this is a completely legitimate request (that they expect to get). If you find that some outlets aren’t open to linking back to your client’s website, make note and take consideration next time you’re planning your media outreach. 

3) Use Social Channels as a Key Distribution Network for PR Messages

Traditionally PR pros follow this approach:

1. Identify the target audience
2. Distribute the message (press release or pitch)
3. Make Follow Up Calls

But by following this approach, and only breaking news via traditional media, means that you are missing out on one of the greatest gift that social networks like Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook give to us—ongoing audience attention. Content marketers know that social media networks should be key distribution channels, and that’s a strategy that PR pros need to embrace too.  We know that everyday people spend hours online looking for information--whether they are bloggers looking for inspiration and content, or consumers trying to figure out what they’re going to consume next. PR pros need to capitalize on these spur-of-the moment opportunities to promote.

These only represent a few ways that PR pros can use content marketing to improve their efforts.  Do you have any other content marketing tips that can be applied to public relations?