What is online PR? How do you choose an online PR agency?
If your business is thriving online, it’s important that you know the appropriate PR tactics to use, and how to choose the right agency for your business.
What is online PR?
Online PR is a great way to promote your business to your target audience. It basically uses online channels instead of having your story seen on magazines, televisions or newspapers.
It involves influencing the media, audience, and communities online. It covers forums, discussion threads, social networks, search engines, blogs, news search, and other communication tools on the internet.
Public relations involve trust. It is the manner of earning people’s trust rather than selling them a product or service.
You can do this by developing your storytelling technique by writing high-quality content. Online PR campaigns include promoting your new business, product, or any newsworthy story about your business through different channels. Sometimes, it is also effective in managing your reputation online.
Is it for all types of business?
Yes. Using online PR tactics and combining it with offline tactics can make a powerful PR strategy that will boost your business.
If your business has a story to tell, you must make an effort to let the media know about it. Use blogs to increase the possibility of publicity or mentions.
You can use different tools, such as wire services (Newswire and PRNewswire), press releases, online media kit, optimized blog, and SEO tactics. Once you received media coverage, you must archive it through social bookmark services.
Online PR Process
Your online PR tactics depend on several factors, including marketing goals, the nature of your business, story, and audience. You need to work with a partner that helps in managing your online PR strategy according to your business goal and techniques.
An online PR Agency Helps
An agency helps enhance your brand image by building the gap between an online and print media and a media communications service. It assists you in reaching your audience through news features like magazines and newspapers. Their content team drafts a newsworthy release and sends it to targeted media.
The agency must ensure that your content is optimized for the search engines for increased visibility. Relevant keywords must be placed in the content to boost your SEO. They present an analytics report that consists of the results of your campaign.
How to Choose an Agency
Just like when choosing any partner for your business, you need to consider several factors when picking the right agency. Consider their expertise in handling your PR. By looking at their manpower, skills, and system, you’ll have an idea of how they are going to carry out the task at the right time.
You have to check the level of expertise of their people. You can ask them a copy of their past work or check the feedback of their previous clients online.
Monitoring tools assess the outcome of a campaign. Ask them how they are going to track your PR campaign in real time.
Upon knowing your goal and requirements, they will make recommendations to improve the result of your PR activities. They must value your suggestions and opinions and work on the best strategy for your business.
Before dealing with any agency, ensure that you check references. Are they recommended by other businesses? You need to give importance to this factor because it just proves how effective they are in handling PR campaigns.
Tools and Services for your PR
It’s important that you identify and use the right approach to PR. If you’re not going to do it, you’ll be facing great competition in the market that will place your business at the backseat.
Don’t let your business be an underdog in your industry. You can lead the pack by using the right PR tactics:
- Use a reputable and credible press release distribution service.
Send a press release via wire services like PR Newswire, PRWeb, or Newswire. Find a service that will distribute it to a vast network of media outlets and journalists. Create a unique angle that is interesting for the media.
By thinking a unique angle of a story, journalists will be enticed to cover it. Use a distribution service that will place it on the search engines and different locations online.
The process involves: creating a release, distribute, and track it. Choose a press release distribution service that follows the same process. Consider their pricing and the add-on offered by these services.
- Muck Rack.
Pitching to journalists is not an easy process. It involves much research about them before you even pitch them your story.
Muck Rack is a tool that helps not only in finding relevant media to pitch but also helping you in reaching out to them. It eliminates all the guesswork for you because they have all the resources that you need.
You’ll find relevant journalists on the platform, get email notifications for related articles that match to your keyword and to track who is sharing your content on social media. It also allows media list organization and the ability to add notes to make your work easier and faster next time.
- Help a Reporter Out (HARO).
Rather than waiting for the media to find you, why not make your business available for them? Provide them newsworthy stories or expert’s insights through HARO.
When you become a member, you’ll get email notifications regarding opportunities that may match with your experience and expertise. If something interest you, simply follow the directions on how you’re going to do it.
If a journalist finds it useful, you can connect with them to provide the information. Your brand will be included in the article. Sometimes they link back to your site.
- Meltwater.
It is a media relation platform that tracks search engine and social network trending data for small businesses. It helps you with social, PR, and marketing aside from media monitoring.
They help in monitoring media coverage in real-time across different channels. They offer social media integration by managing your social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn in one platform.
The site also helps in ensuring that you’re pitching to the right reporters. They have the most updated list of media and what they are covering right now. You can create your own media list, distribute release, and track.
You can create your own dashboards with metrics that matter to your business. The site also helps in creating your branded reports and newsletters.
- Google Alerts.
Google Alerts is a free tool that helps you get notified about the topics that interest you. For PR purposes, you want to ensure that you’re getting alerts for your company name, top competitors, and keywords.
For instance, you can set up an alert for a similar product you’re offering. You can use to find out if it’s possible for you to get the same coverage. You’ll have an idea if the same tactic would work for you.
- Mention.
Mention is a media monitoring tool that helps in tracking who’s talking about your brand and competitors. It is hard to monitor these conversations online if you don’t have the right tools.
The platform helps in monitoring all the mentions your brand is getting all across the channels on the internet. It identifies influencers who are important for your business and industry. Furthermore, it provides you the opportunity to join in forums or conversations that involved your brand.
It also assists in tracking your performance. It also provides an opportunity for you to assess the results. You can sort out mentions by location, language, source type, time, and more.
- Duct Tape Marketing Instant Press Release
It is a tool that helps startup business or any business start their press release distribution writing. It’s not true that only professional writers can craft a newsworthy and effective release. With this tool, you can create attention-grabbing content fast.
It’s a plug-in method that will help you create an effective release. You don’t need to pay or download anything. Simply fill in the blanks and the tool will guide you in each step.
- Coverage Book.
Coverage Book helps you in preparing your PR report. You can produce quality reports in quickly in some minutes.
You can use this report when presenting to your clients or team. The tool provides customization of the book, automated screenshots of your coverage, automated metrics, and the ability to store all your media coverage in one platform. The information you gathered helps you in getting better results for your future campaigns.
These PR tools can help you in generating the result you want for your business. You only have to choose the right tools to enhance your campaigns.
There are many tools that you can use to boost interest in your business. Sometimes, you don’t even need a PR agency to start these campaigns. You can do it on your own without breaking your bank.