These days, practically anyone can become a content creator, which has significantly lowered the barrier to entry, thus making quality content more difficult to find or reach the right people. In the past, all companies had to do was create ads and issue press releases to be able to get media coverage, but these days it’s a lot more complicated than that. Now, there are plenty of approaches for brands to get media coverage, connect with journalists and cut through the digital noise.
However, the fact that content creation is getting more popular with each passing day, means that digital PR is more important than ever, as the goal of public relations is to make a brand a lot more visible, and in front of all the right people. Marketing, and more specifically, content marketing, has to work with PR to make the content and the brand behind it stand out and even thrive.
For a piece of content to reach a high number of people, it has to be supported with a strong PR campaign, and on the other hand, content marketing has been widely popularized in the PR world as an effective and efficient tool. Both PR and content marketing are all about telling interesting and compelling stories, which is why they work so well together.
When combined, these two tools can put great stories in front of journalists, editors, and influencers, who can give the content a great boost and potentially make it viral. Additionally, if a brand consistently creates high-quality and engaging content, it’s going to get a lot more attention from the aforementioned people.
One way that businesses can go about this is to work with professionals who have relationships with relevant journalists, editors and influencers, and experience in creating compelling content.
To do this, companies have to research and discover relevant influential people in the industry, and then study the type of content they enjoy, their values, and their main talking points. Then, the company can reach out to these people and offer them help, whether it’s to suggest a new story or to suggest a different perspective on an existing story.
This leads to creating content that the influencer - whether a journalist, editor or influencer - can further distribute to their own audiences, thus strengthening the relationship with their audience, while simultaneously building the relationship with the brand.
One method that popularized this strategy is called growth hacking, where companies have their own tactics to get the attention of the right media outlets, popular blogs, and target audiences. These tactics include things such as social media platforms, content marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO). Furthermore, one of the big reasons why companies tend to work with PR agencies and PR professionals on growth hacking is because they are the ones that have a big list of contacts and relationships that are already strong, which makes it easier for these companies to get the right type of media coverage. Without them, it’s a lot more difficult for businesses to get the right attention.
