We have all heard it before, content is king! But before content marketing how were we getting our information out there? PR.
When looking at content marketing and PR it’s hard to see them fitting together. Content marketing is like the pre-party. It’s fun information, warms people up to your product, gets them excited, people check in often to find out new information. While PR is kinda like the cleanup team. Often times you don’t hear from your PR team unless something is going wrong, they clean up all the big messes, they are the ones to smooth things over. But it doesn’t have to be that way! They don’t have to compete or feel like there is only room for one of them. Both can actually thrive and benefit from one another.
Let’s see what I am talking about below….
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1. PR Amplifies Content
Content marketing is about providing useful information to your audience and potential customers. Content marketing isn’t really about talking about yourself like most PR is. However, for content, you are still creating, whether it is a blog post, webinar or live video chat. And no matter what it is it’s still critical people see your content.
But what if people aren’t reading your content? Think about it does it really matter what you are doing if no one can find it? So much content is being created everyday what could set you apart?
This is where PR comes in. PR is all about who you know. One of their main tasks is building relationships! And with the internet and social media making news available 24/7 it is more important than ever that PR pros have those strong connections with influencers in the online media world as well as with tradition news outlets. When content marketers build relationships with PR teams, PR can help get their content in front of and shared by those industry influencers and media outlets.
The combination of great content being written by marketing your teams and then being amplified by PR helps your brand identity by ensuring your content is seen by a larger more engaged audience. Marketing and PR can work together to make their content marketing efforts successful.
2. Content Can Help Improve PR’s ROI
Content creators spend a lot of time building in specific keywords to help improve SEO optimization and this is something PR pros need to take advantage of. Many times a press release is just written, with no question of how easily (or difficult) it will be found amongst everything else on the internet. But when PR teams start incorporating links to content the marketing team has created before, as a part of their strategy, it helps them both out! By generating more traffic for both pieces of content which in turns helps with customer discovery and sales and the ability to measure their impact for both teams!
3. Brand Consistency
You know when you were little and you would ask Mom something and she would tell you to go ask Dad and vice-versa and it felt like you really could never get an answer. Well, that might be how your own customers feel about your content!
You don’t want the content marketing team communicating to your audience one way and the PR team another way. Yes, content marketing is often times more casual and conversational while PR is seen as informative and factual but your brand message still has to stay consistent. That’s why both teams must come together to talk about content and editorial calendars to see what topics are being discussed and how.
As much as everyone loved Wendy’s tweet that happened last month some people thought it was a little off brand when looking at the other things they have done not only with content but even on Twitter. It didn’t really fit with the brand and might have been expected more from a Burger King than a Wendy’s. See you don’t want you content team being the mess your PR team has to clean up!
Make sure you there is a unity so that all content- whether is’s on a blog, social post or at a public relations event is centered around similar messages and styles. And hey, maybe you guys can even share ideas and learn something from one another!
Wrap It Up
So why should PR matter to content marketers? Because PR is about reaching the right people. About relationships, about keeping the brand identity and image strong and clean.
Content marketing is about attracting people to your brand. Giving them meaningful and useful pieces of information that entertains and teaches them something new.
When you combine PR and content marketing you are able to put the content that is being created (that takes time and money) into the hands of people who will get it to your audience so people actually read it and take action.
This can give your content a huge upper hand and make that great content you are creating even easier to find. So don’t look at PR as your competition or content marketers as job stealers. You two are doing everything and nothing similar at the same time but can both win when you borrow each other strengths.