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Have you ever wondered why the PR campaigns of many businesses fall flat or have limited success? A key factor is the lack of emotion and a failure to humanize the brand. Instead of tugging on your heartstrings and stirring some deep emotional connections, the PR content instead feels bland, uninteresting, and has no resonance.
In this article, I aim to help you avoid that and give you the tools to humanize your brand so your PR strategies can shine.
Businesses often make the mistake of seeing their customers as just figures and stats. But this isn’t the case. Customers are humans. They have emotions and thoughts, and these things affect their browsing and shopping habits.
If you tap into the human and emotional aspects of your customers, you can first build a bond of trust and a greater understanding. After that, then comes the sales spiel and the PR and marketing to get your conversions.
Simply put, by humanizing your brand, you make your business more relatable, more trustworthy, and more appealing. I am far more likely to connect with a business that I feel is run by real, down-to-earth and likeable people, as opposed to a faceless corporation.
The main aim of humanizing brands is to break the wall between your business and the customer. You want to let your customers see the personal elements of your business and give them a face or piece of content they can relate to. A creative digital PR agency can help with this, and I have created 8 tips below that will also help humanize your brand.
Humanization needs to be an organisation-wide approach and everyone needs to be on board with it. It’s no good if your PR team starts creating humanized content only for your marketing team to continue creating bland and strike content!
Humanizing the brand should be a process all teams need to be aware of so it could be a great idea to have a meeting or a brainstorming session at the start of your PR campaign where everyone can contribute and get invested in the idea.
A simple way to humanize your brand is to use the same type of language as your audience. This requires a little studying and understanding of cultures, regional variances, and dialects, but it works wonders!
If you sound like your customers, they are more likely to resonate with what you are saying. Basically, match your tone and language with your customer.
Oftentimes PR content is written in an impersonal manner using a third-person tense or strictly formal language. This is BORING and it’s also a surefire way to switch customers off. Of course, professionalism is needed but add personalization to your content. Use first-person language, address the reader using “you” – make your PR content read like an actual conversation.
The best PR campaigns weave stories and characters into the content. These could be real-life examples of customers who have had positive experiences with your business. A personal element like this is something that the public can relate to and it helps build trust.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Ok, ok, bad example! But, the point stands – don’t be afraid to add humour to your PR content! People can relate to humour and it makes the content much more interesting, engaging, and refreshing. Just don’t overdo it – there is always a time and place for humour.
PR messages often fall short because they put the immediate focus on the end goal. This is a surefire way to put people off. Instead, your PR messages should focus primarily on the customer with a secondary goal of pushing for sales for example. Always put them first and this helps humanise your brand.
If I get a response from a business on social media or a comment from a Youtuber it immediately reinforces my positive image of that person or company. I know that there is actually someone there who is taking note and listening to what we are saying! To that end, make sure you engage with your audience and reply to their comments wherever possible.
I know that I am far more likely to engage with a business if I can see their staff and know that they are normal people just like me. It gives reassurance and makes them more approachable. A simple way to do this is to include media that shows the personalities and interests of your team.
This could be via something like a staff page on your website, or social media content and blogs that focus on out-of-work activities.
Don’t let your company be a faceless, monotonous entity that customers can’t relate to! Instead, start humanizing the brand and bring a level of emotion and personalization to your business. With this PR approach, customers will be able to relate to your company, digest your PR messages easier, and ultimately build a bond of trust and a positive relationship.
Today, businesses can spread their PR message far and wide and easily appeal to the public on a national or global scale. But what about local PR? In the age of digitisation, the internet, and social media, the local market is often overlooked but it shouldn’t be as it can offer a huge boost to your PR campaign.
If your company has a more regional operation, we discuss local PR below including five ways you can improve your reputation and brand awareness in your immediate business vicinity.
In most instances, businesses have a head office or a base of operations tied to a specific location. Local PR aims to promote your business within that specific location so you can forge a closer relationship and build trust with your local community.
You are essentially taking the standard PR practices and strategies, but condensing them and concentrating them on the region surrounding your business. This could be a county, a city, a village, or a group of towns for example.
By building an effective local PR strategy, you can become the defacto company for your industry in your local region that customers choose. Local PR can also give you an advantage over competitors, build relationships with other companies and local media outlets, and ultimately lead to more customers.
Local PR is different from a national or global approach and it could be beneficial to hire a digital PR agency to help. You can give them the local info and insight into the region, and the local PR company can use this info to formulate strategies you can use. To help further, I have listed five simple strategies you can use to boost your local PR below:
The first thing you should do as part of your local PR strategy is to reach out to local media outlets. This can include newspapers, online news sites, community websites, local journalists, and local radio stations.
These media outlets are the prime methods you will use to disperse your local PR message so it’s important to forge connections and make yourself known. A local PR company can help reach out to these outlets but it’s also an ongoing process that you will have to work at.
Depending on the size of your local area there may be a range of local events you can show support for and get involved with. Examples include:
This requires a more hands-on approach compared to digital PR strategies, but it can be incredibly rewarding. The more people see you interacting with the community and getting involved, the greater the bond of trust will be.
If you do a little digging you can find a host of online and offline local groups including:
These are all potentially great sources to spread your PR message to the local community and they have the benefit of already being established. When joining or interacting with online groups like this, always check the guidelines as sometimes the groups may not allow business promotion unless you specifically request it.
By interacting with these local online groups and communities, you can get your PR message out there and people will start to recognize your business and pay attention to what you are saying.
Generally speaking, the local public and media outlets don’t care about national events or business on a global scale unless it directly affects their community.
As a result, your local PR should have a more personalised and intimate approach that takes into consideration local events, landmarks, and organisations.
For example, you could work with local charities or make donations to local causes. This does require a little research and effort but by utilising a local angle in your PR media, you will connect better with the general public as opposed to making a heap of PR smoke about global topics they simply have no interest in.
While local news and media outlets are imperative for local PR, don’t overlook other local businesses too. Obviously, this shouldn’t include competitors! You don’t really want to forge relationships with them although you should always be courteous and friendly if contact arises.
Instead, look for complementary businesses, or respected local companies that already have a good reputation. You can reach out to them with things like press releases, guest posts, and mutual agreements for promotion.
Many local businesses do this and it yields results as you end up with a core of trusted companies in a local area that work together for mutual benefit and positive PR. As the saying goes, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!
As you can see, local PR can be especially effective and it’s a strategy that businesses often overlook in favor of national or global exposure. While these are both important too, building your reputation, standing, and exposure in your local area can work wonders; especially if you mainly service a particular region and have stiff competition.
PR and content marketing are two especially important processes that a business can undertake to boost sales, improve brand awareness, and increase profit. A mistake we see time and time again, however, is companies failing to see the link between these two things.
Although they serve a different purpose and require a slightly different skillset, PR and content marketing have amazing synergy and this should be tapped into to take your business to the next level. In the below article, I explore the link between PR and content marketing and how you combine their efforts for superb end results.
Let’s first make sure we are clear on the definitions and understand what each process is and aims to achieve.
Cambridge Dictionary defines PR as:
“The activity of providing the public with information about your organization so that people have a positive idea of the organization’s work”
It’s the process of boosting your brand image and building a bond of trust with your customers. PR aims to spread your business messages and show that you can have a positive impact and that you are a brand that has the right answers.
PR specialists can utilize a range of methods such as press releases, blogs, white papers, social media content, web content, and guest posts to help increase brand mentions and get the public talking about your business in a positive way.
Content marketing can be defined as:
“The process of producing and sharing online content such as blogs, social media posts, and video content with the aim of stimulating interest in a company’s products and/or services”
We can see already that there is an underlying theme for both processes involving raising awareness however where PR seeks to improve your brand image and trust, content marketing is more geared towards sales and profit.
Content marketing can inadvertently improve your brand image and reputation but it is not the main aim. Instead, you are trying to increase the visibility and awareness of your business offerings and ultimately want this to lead to more conversions.
You’ve got a clear definition of each process now and should already be able to see how they can work together but let’s explore the specifics.
Instead of taking a fragmented and compartmentalized approach to business, you will see below how content marketing and PR can work together. This includes the sharing of goals, improved efficiency, and better SEO.
Oftentimes you will find that the goals of content marketing and PR overlap. This is fantastic news for your business as it means you can hopefully achieve your goals with much less effort and in a quicker timeframe.
Examples of potential goals that may overlap with content marketing and PR include:
These could apply to PR or content marketing and it means your teams can work together to get things done quicker.
Sometimes content marketing can fall flat or have a limited reach due to a lack of trust and a poor brand image and this is where positive PR helps greatly.
By creating a watertight PR campaign or using the help of a full-service digital PR agency, you can use your PR to boost the effectiveness of your content marketing. PR naturally helps build trust, improve your brand awareness, and generally raise your public opinion.
This has the knock-on effect of making your content marketing more effective. Customers are far more likely to pay attention, listen to what’s being said, and engage with your content.
Similar to how the goals for content marketing and PR overlap, so can the work and ideas. Instead of brainstorming and formulating new content marketing and PR strategies separately, you can hold joint meetings.
With these joint sessions, you have more brainpower contributing to idea generation and each team may have ideas that the other may not have thought of. As the saying goes, two heads are better than one and this is true for PR and content marketing.
The amazing thing about all this content that you generate via content marketing and PR is that it all contributes to your SEO. Think of the different items you may produce:
These are just some of the main examples and there are many more. The point is, is that all this content looks fantastic to Google and it should only help improve your SEO. Because both processes require content too, you should have an inexhaustible supply for the foreseeable future which helps with consistency.
Businesses often make the mistake of treating different departments or processes separately and keeping them apart. While this can help compartmentalize the company, in the case of content marketing vs pr, it can be counterproductive.
As you can see from the above, these two important business processes can synergize, bounce off of each other, and be mutually beneficial. You can combine them to achieve common goals and improve efficiency.
If you look at the beginnings of PR in the early 1900s to what it is today there is a huge difference. Techniques and strategies have evolved and technology has radically changed how businesses approach public relations.
This PR evolution is happening now in 2023 too though, and it’s important for businesses to keep up to date with digital PR trends. By keeping aloft of what’s happening in the world of PR, you can make sure your message remains effective. To give you a head start, I delve into PR trends in 2023 and what you can expect in the coming years.
Like them or not, influencers are here to stay and they can do wonders for PR campaigns. This is something that more and more businesses are realizing and with the continued rise of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, this PR trend will continue to evolve in 2023 and beyond.
Influencers have incredible clout and they can reach millions of people instantly via their social media channels. Their followers and fans adore them and businesses use this clout in the form of paid sponsorships.
The premise is simple – you sponsor the influencer and work with them to benefit from the ready-made audience they have. When influencers have millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram and create daily content, it’s easy to see why influencer PR and marketing are so effective.
The art of storytelling is not new in PR and it’s an especially effective tool we use to add personalization and reach customers on an emotional level, and this is something a leading digital PR agency can assist you with. However, the way storytelling is used is evolving right before our eyes.
Traditionally, stories would be woven into media like press releases, blogs, and news articles. Now, companies are including storytelling in other popular mediums like social media, vlogs, live streaming, and podcasts.
We can only expect this to develop further as other PR channels gain popularity and become the preferred method for getting your message across.
We live in a world where we have a virtually limitless array of analytical data via platforms like Google Analytics. The information we can get relating to sales, SEO, customer habits, and industry trends is mind-boggling.
That being said, you can guarantee that analytics will remain a driving force behind PR strategies in the coming years and businesses will continue to develop their campaigns based on what the stats are saying.
Whether AI is a good or bad thing remains to be seen but it is making waves in various industries currently and it’s one of the hottest topics in 2023. Even if you don’t use social media or aren’t overly digital you will have still heard about AI and how it is being used.
I expect AI to continue to make inroads in PR too and already there are companies utilizing AI-enhanced software to improve their strategies and make more effective business decisions. In some instances, AI programs like ChatGPT is also being used to generate written PR content or article outlines.
How many times have you checked your social media feed or preferred online news portal only to see that another business or individual has been “cancelled”? With how fast information can travel, even the slightest mess up from one of your employees, or bad feedback from a customer can cause a crisis.
Before you know it, your business is under fire on social media, and everything is spiralling out of control. This is why one of the most important digital PR trends is to have effective crisis communication. You need to have an effective plan of action to deal with a crisis and stop it from hitting your PR message negatively.
I’ve previously written a piece on the importance of humanized content and this is something you can expect to continue.
The general public isn’t interested in faceless corporations spilling out a load of generic business spiel. It simply isn’t interesting, doesn’t resonate with them, and gives them no reason to trust companies or get invested in what they are saying.
Making your PR content personal and humanized is the way forward and this is one of the most important public relations trends currently happening. Customers now want more from their interactions with businesses and want to make an emotional connection.
Traditionally, companies would push either a global or local approach to PR but now we are seeing businesses place equal emphasis on both.
Local PR cannot be ignored as it allows companies to tap into their home community and rally support from the towns and villages they service.
Similarly, global PR is also incredibly important due to the digitalization of companies, the increased availability of international business, and the fact that PR messages can be relayed to millions of people via the internet and social media.
As you can see, the PR landscape is changing and how we communicate with the public will look very different in a few years. I urge you to take these PR trends on board and re-evaluate your strategies so that you can futureproof your business and keep your brand awareness and reputation sparkling for the long term.
PR strategies are hugely important and can run alongside marketing strategies for mutual gains. There are many elements to a PR strategy including social media, video content, blogs, guest posts, and web content. However, a tried and tested method that is sometimes overlooked is the press release.
In this guide, I take a look at how to write a press release so you can utilize this effective strategy as part of your PR campaign.
Simply put, a press release is an article that details a story relating to your company or brand that the media and public will be interested in. Examples of press release subjects include:
The aim is to get your press release shared via media outlets as part of your PR campaign to boost your business reputation and brand awareness.
So why bother with press releases? Surely no one uses them anymore? This isn’t true! Press releases remain especially useful and have even gained more traction in today’s digital world where they can be easily distributed. Benefits include:
Press releases are incredibly cheap and if you have writing experience you can usually make one yourself!
Additionally, the article generated can push your content marketing strategies and help with SEO due to keyword usage and backlinks. You can also use a press release to push a core business value or theme or continue a story you have woven into your digital content.
Writing a press release is something that you will develop a knack for over time, but you can get an amazing head start by using the below eight tips:
You may not know but there is a common format used for press releases which can be broken into seven sections:
You can’t expect your press release to gain traction if you just make a story about how amazing you are. Try to think of a unique angle, a story, or a compelling theme that you can weave into the press release. This should make it more interesting and for media outlets to be more likely to share it.
The title of the press release is essentially a headline. This is the first thing people read, therefore, it must immediately grab their attention and make them want to continue reading. The headline must also convey the main message of the press release and leave the reader in no doubt about the subject.
Below the title, a press release typically has a summary or subheading. This is just a short sentence that summarizes the content. It should support the original title, and give a sense of what is to be expected in the following text.
After the title and summary, you dive right into the press release and it’s important to make the introductory paragraph concise, and have essential information laid out plainly. The first sentence must include the date and your company’s name and location, but after that, grab the reader’s interest and get the main point of the press release across.
When writing a press release, you can’t rely only on your storytelling and writing ability. You must give context to your story and back up what you are saying with facts and statistics.
Use references from high authority figures wherever possible as this will also strengthen your credibility and the impact of your press release. A B2B PR agency can always help with backlinks and finding external references to use.
While the point of a press release is to gain attention and improve brand awareness, you also want to prompt readers to do something! This could be visiting your website, buying a new product, or checking out your social media, for example. Therefore, make sure the press release has at least one clear call to action telling them what to do!
All press releases should have a boilerplate. This is a simple paragraph at the end of a press release that includes your core business information as an additional form of promotion and so that readers can get in touch if they want.
Today, the PR statement is often underutilized in favor of social media and other PR tools however they can still be incredibly important and useful. By learning how to write a press release statement, you can improve your PR and content marketing strategies, improve your brand awareness, and highlight important events for your business.
There are many different devices you can utilize in your public relations strategy to enhance your message and reach customers on a different level. One such device that is often overlooked is storytelling.
As you will see below, storytelling makes your public relations more unique, more memorable, and more entertaining. They can also help convey your message more effectively and stir up your user’s imagination where simple marketing and brand messages can’t.
When a business creates a PR strategy the aim is to improve their brand image, reputation, and awareness. What better way to do this than to craft a story and weave it throughout your marketing and digital media? Storytelling is perfect for this and it has three key purposes for PR:
Oftentimes PR messages fall short because they daily to capture the public’s imagination. They can be boring, forgettable, and bland. Why should someone take notice of your PR messaging when there are hundreds of other businesses writing exactly the same stuff?
A story woven into your PR message helps stimulate the imagination. Perhaps this could be a recurring character who you develop the personality of and put in different scenarios in your media? Maybe you could place your business in a fantasy setting, or create an analogy to a particular story genre.
There are endless possibilities, but the main point is that the customer’s imagination will be engaged and this means your PR message is more likely to sink in.
How many big businesses can you think of that have used storytelling that sticks in your mind? I can immediately think of a few – the meerkats from Compare the Market and the shenanigans they get up to.
Or what about the Christmas John Lewis adverts that always have a fantastic story complete with music? These are just a few examples and they are incredibly memorable because of the storytelling. The characters, themes, music, and plot are all things we remember, even years after the campaigns have ended.
Oftentimes when using digital PR services you will create a key message that you want to push in your public relations strategies. This could be an emphasis on affordability, the quality of your service, or the eco-friendly nature of your business, for example.
Storytelling can help develop your key messages and make sure that they have maximum impact. The aim is to leave no doubt in the public’s mind what your company excels at and why they should trust you/and or use your products/services.
You should now have a clearer idea of the potential benefit of public relations storytelling, but how exactly do you do it? There is no set procedure but there are two key elements – crafting that compelling story hook, and then utilizing it consistently across your media channels.
The hardest part is to think of something compelling that customers will remember and/or can relate to. Some examples of things you could base your storytelling on include:
Characters are perhaps the easiest to write. You can draft a character or recurring individual such as a person, an employee, or even a cartoon character. Your public relations media could then involve that character in different scenarios like in a story.
Alternatively, you can run with a specific theme or plotline and develop it over a series of multiple press releases and media pieces so that customers get invested – like a soap opera.
Creating a real-life storyline is often highly effective too. For example, you could use real customers and tell the story of their interactions with your products/services and how it positively impacted their lives.
Be creative! Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and try new and unique ideas that will really stick in the public’s mind.
With a story created, it’s time to use it across your different media channels. This should include your website, blog articles, social media content, video content, and any physical media you use for public relations.
The key is to be consistent and make sure the story is the same across all channels. This enhances your PR message and makes sure that everything is cohesive. You can also get creative and tell a progressive story that unfolds across your media outlets.
For example, the story could start on your website, move forward on your blogs, develop further, and finally conclude on your social media posts. Use your media channels as a storyboard or a canvas on which you can get your story and PR message across.
As you can see, storytelling in PR can work wonders and take your message to new levels. If you were struggling to create a positive impact and boost your reputation in the right way, weaving a story into your PR message is the way forward.
The story should be consistent throughout your different media channels such as your website, social media posts, and promotional content to produce a cohesive PR strategy that will resonate more with your customer base.
Large-scale crises have the potential to derail a company’s PR campaign and undo all the hard work, money, and effort that has been put in. This potential for disaster is only heightened in today’s social-media-driven world where information travels fast and a business’s reputation can rise and fall in the blink of an eye.
To avert crises effectively and to minimize any PR disasters, you must have a watertight crisis communication strategy and this is what we look at below.
Crisis communication is the process of dealing with a crisis. There are many business crises examples including:
Essentially, crises erupt when your company does something wrong. The communication is what you do to minimize any PR damage and try to stop your reputation from freefalling. You are trying to reassure your customers, redress the issue, and explain why it happened.
Poor crisis communication threatens to annihilate your PR and damage your reputation with stakeholders, suppliers, customers, and the general public. With social media, the internet, and how fast information travels today, this simply can’t happen.
Should the worst happen, you have to be prepared and this is something a strategic digital PR agency can help with. I have also created a list of crisis communication tips below so you can start to formulate your own strategies. Hopefully, you never have to use them, but it is much better to be prepared for every eventuality.
Before a crisis happens, it’s a great idea to develop a crisis management plan. This should detail your goals, which employees are involved, and a range of steps to take to make effective crisis communication.
With a plan formulated and distributed to the relevant people, you can make sure that everyone knows what to do immediately if a problem occurs.
A huge mistake I see companies making during a crisis is to start blaming the customer or taking an unsympathetic approach. This is a surefire way to destroy your reputation and only deepen the crisis.
Even if the third parties are clearly wrong, you must try and be sympathetic and be seen to be understanding. Adopt a collaborative approach and refrain from immediately going on the defensive.
We all know how quickly things can spread online today with the prevalence of social media. A celebrity or CEO only has to say something unsavoury at a press conference and within minutes it’s plastered over social media and news outlets.
This means that your crisis communication has to be QUICK. Don’t delay or waste time – time is of the essence and you need to fire control before things get out of hand. The instance you hear of the crisis you must take action.
Maintaining regular communication is also key. If you communicate infrequently, you are essentially leaving it up to people’s imaginations to invent their own version of events.
This cannot happen as what actually happened can quickly get lost as social media invents new stories and regardless of if it’s true or not, it will damage your reputation. Therefore, communicate quickly, and communicate often with updates so the public has a reliable voice to listen to.
Most companies have an array of media channels available for crisis communication too. Use them! Don’t just upload a blog to your business website. Make social media posts, do a press release, make video content – utilize all means of communication available so channels are covered and your crisis communication is heard by as many people as possible.
The worst thing a company can do during a crisis is bury its head in the sand and try to plough on without heeding any advice. Usually, the public, your customers, and employees within your company can offer sound advice.
Listen to them! If you discount what people are saying and don’t take heed of their advice, this can appear arrogant and make your business seem aloof which will only damage your PR and reputation further.
As with most business practices, analysis and evaluation are equally as important as the crisis communication itself. Once the event is over and you have successfully managed the crisis, you should review the process.
During this review you can look at what you did well, and areas for improvement. The aim is to make sure that if something like this happens again, you are better prepared and can react quickly.
As you can see, effective communication during a crisis is imperative. If you are seen to be taking action, keeping the public informed, and being responsible, you can greatly reduce any damage to your business reputation and PR.
Creating crisis management strategies helps greatly with this and allows you to be proactive instead of reactive. If you have a plan in place, everyone knows exactly what to do, and you can minimize the effect the crisis has on your organization.
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