Ten Reasons For Adopting Online PR

When I mentioned that I thought this was the right time to work in PR to an unemployed PR account manager a few weeks ago, his immediate reaction was to say: “Are you insane? PR budgets are being cut, marketing budgets are being cut, advertising budgets are being cut – now take a cold shower and think about what you’re saying!”

I’ll skip the cold shower and admit he had a point. However he did have a number of fundamental flaws in his thinking that I believe are endemic within PR companies, advertising agencies and media companies. It’s these flaws in understanding which concern me, and which are particularly relevant to what’s happening in the online world.

There are 10 key points to contemplate when talking about this brave new world:

1.        Acceleration in Online PR growth: Whilst it’s true to say that PR budgets are being cut, we are also seeing a significant shift into online PR. Why? Cost effectiveness, ability to hit specific niche demographics, vast quantities of accurate campaign metrics data or analytics and long term exposure benefits (stretching into years) beyond the initial phase of the campaign are all proving compelling reasons. We are predicting that the current financial squeeze will see a dramatic acceleration in this trend over coming years.

2.        ROI measurement: ROI in offline PR is a fairly homogenous concept. Not so in the online arena. It really depends on the client’s objectives. Concepts to consider are cost comparison to equivalent PPC (pay per click) campaign; cost comparison to equivalent banner ad campaign; exposure to unique users; exposure to page impressions; dwell time of users on content; growth in the use of campaign keywords within search engines; growth in the number of inbound links to home site, exposure to RSS feeds; eZines and eNewsletters.

3.        Targeting of appropriate online media: Online PR seeding of the correct blogs, sites, portals, forums, social networks is crucial. Whilst you cannot control viral distribution, targeting the right web real estate sets the tone for leading online opinion and conversation. Some site checks that should be made include: global distribution of traffic, demographic make up of site users, history of the site in terms of reputation, identification of key topic focus, levels of traffic, general indicators like Google page rank, Alexa rank, inbound link distribution etc.

4.        Online PR and SEO: The impact of Online PR on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is something that needs close attention. It is absolutely essential to understand how any online campaign is going to impact the long term health of the client’s site. Things like aiming to improve search engine visibility under certain keywords, inbound link growth and positioning the client site within the right online neighbourhood all need to be considered.

5.        Brand representation within search engines: Inevitably, everybody is Googling products, services, companies, people – just about everything you can think of. Therefore, it’s important to recognise how your online PR and social media strategy is going to impact perceptions within SERPs (search engine results pages). Online references could have long-term benefits, but by the same token they could also cause long-term problems.

6.          Brand reputation management has just got a whole lot tougher with Google’s introduction of personalised search engine results. Determining how online PR and social media can deal with this is going to be one of the key challenges of brand positioning over the next couple of years.

7.          Online video content: The recent introduction of Youtube results into Google SERPs, combined with the explosion in online video content, means that many companies are concerned about positioning their own branded video content. How to influence this successfully is another challenge that requires careful management.

8.        Identifying and securing social media placement: It’s quite interesting to note how slow many brands and companies have been in securing their position on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. As a brand, do you really want a third party expressing views under your company name? In the same way that domain cyber squatting became an issue, brands need to be aware of capturing their position early within these key social networks before someone else does.

9.        Keyword optimization: Wrapped up within many of these online PR and social media facets is the role of keyword optimisation. Which is essentially selecting the right keywords within press releases, video content tags and SEO strategy, so that your PR message is visible now and into the future.

10.      Cost-effectiveness of online PR and social media: Conveying the message that online PR and social media is going to be essential and highly cost-effective will become key. For example, Orbital Media Network recently completed a video-based, global online PR campaign for a leading sports wear manufacturer that achieved nearly 750,000 unique views on Youtube. To achieve similar results through a PPC or banner ad campaign would have cost around £1 million. Needless to say, our campaign fee was a tiny fraction of this! It’s a compelling analysis that is a portent of things to come.

So where does all this lead? No one really knows for certain, but there is a high degree of probability that social media and online PR will be playing an increasingly important role in the years ahead.

Peter Brady is a director of http://www.orbitalmedianetwork.com which has worked with companies such as Adidas, National Trust, Mirror Group, and Island Records.