Written by Karla Jo Helms – at JoTo PR Disruptors.
The Merge of Marketing & PR Through Social PR—and Why CMOs, PR & Marketing Managers NEED to Come Together
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PR’s already fast-paced atmosphere has had to catch up with the transformation social media has brought to the web. Digital technology has become the backbone of every industry, and social media to has grown from a networking tool to a marketing mainstay. It’s no secret now that the most successful campaigns are those that integrate both PR and marketing methods, cohesively.
Understanding PR, Marketing and how Social Media has influenced the combination and evolution of both is critical to helping your own organization gain maximum social exposure.
Let’s break it down.
- Public Relations:
Public Relations, known as PR, promotes the reputation of an individual, brand or a company through earned media coverage and focuses on building relationships through communication with an overall goal to increase ROI. This is accomplished by executing a strategic PR plan which builds awareness of a product or services that then influences the target audience.
- Marketing:
Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. Some marketing tactics include paid adverting, social media marketing, content marketing, videos, print advertising and many others. With the correct data-driven marketing strategy, consumers become more likely to purchase from your brand rather than your competitors.
- Social Media Influence:
Social media has provided a tremendous influence on PR and Marketing. Brands can now publish content about their product or service (marketing) allowing viewers to “engage” almost instantly, leaving comments, reactions, reviews, ratings, and feedback (public relations) about their experience. When users engage with a brand’s post or public page, it creates instant credibility, increasing brand engagement and loyalty, which in return increases buying decisions influenced by social media marketing. With this revolution, brands’ Social PR has become more customer-centric, meaning faster company response time to customer questions, concerns, or complaints with a goal of building a healthy long-term community online. Enabling connection with an audience like never before, social media allows brands to build their voices online through effective content sharing, managing and protecting their online reputations, media monitoring, and community engagement.
- Social PR:
Social PR is the integration between social media and public relations with a common goal that incorporates best social media practices for maximum PR exposure. Social PR means interaction with people through various social marketing tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many others. Through these platforms, marketing professionals can create clear communication channels. Creating unique and compelling content sets brands up for news that the entire world can share, quickly. We are used to hearing B2B and B2C communication, but social PR has sparked another category called B2H, business-to-human communication, helping companies, journalists, and firms create deeper connections with followers and humanizing brands. At the end of the day, everyone wants human interaction that is concise and clear, not impersonalized or robotic.
Social PR isn’t going away.
Actually, it’s deeply entrenched and growing faster. Public Relations, Marketing, and Social Media departments must work closely together because social PR’s influence is simply too large to ignore. The speed of communication has dramatically changed, and the web is a noisy place. So noisy that the lifespan of the news story is shorter than it’s ever been before.
Although news stories fly by, social PR has the ability to take them further and faster, changing the way people consume and engage with information, forever. As PR and Marketing professionals merge, it’s critical that they stay relevant in today’s incredibly digital world and adapt to modern marketing models at a rapid speed.
“The most successful campaigns are those that integrate both PR and Marketing practices known as Social PR.”
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How Do You Do It?
Today the integrated PESO model is a guideline to use in measuring your authority on GOOGLE and other search engines. Spotted and codified first by a PR veteran (PR Pros are smart!), the “PESO model takes the four media types—paid, earned, shared and owned—and merges them together.” (1)
- Paid Media. Not big commercials or highly creative print ads—this refers to digital advertising like social media advertising, sponsored content, and even email marketing.
- Earned Media. Publicity or media relations.
It’s getting your name in the news. Newspapers, trade publications, TV, radio and podcasts interviewing and writing about you or airing your story.
- Shared Media. AKA social media. It’s always evolving and changing—and goes beyond, as you read above, marketing or customer service teams using it. It has become a main source of communications internally and externally.
- Owned Media. AKA your own content. It lives on your website or blog. You control the messaging and tell the story in a way you want it told. (1)
“And when the PESO model is working at its best,
it can help you establish authority.
“Authority means you’re a thought leader.
“Others see you as an expert … even your competitors.
“And Google links to you on the first page of results
because it also sees you as an expert.
“This is the golden ticket.” (1) ~ Gini Dietrich, PR Veteran and Author
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When doing an initial competitive analysis for a company, we look at these areas as part of the process. It doesn’t matter the size of the company—they need all four “buckets” or categories—the only thing that varies is the volume, frequency and quality of their communications.
In other words, if a company has the model in place, where could it be improved?
And what is their competition doing?
And what volume or frequency should they really be publishing to reach the goals they have set out to?
JOTO PR offers services in each of the different categories (some of which are listed below).
- Marketing Strategy
- Social Media Strategy
- LinkedIn advertising
- LinkedIn lead generation
- Social media growth
- Social media advertising
- Email marketing copy writing and list acquisition
- PR strategy
- Publicity
- News Releases
- Media Pitching
- Social media content curation and posting plus engagement
- Social media growth
- Blog content writing
- Newsletter content writing
- eBooks development
- Whitepaper development
- Sales content writing
PR drives business. It drives the message. It is meant to be incorporated to work with marketing and sales as one cohesive machine.
JOTO PR knows how to make you a thought leader—and today, your thought leadership or authority is commanded online.
