Content Marketing for PR: How to build brand visibility, influence and trust in today’s social age

By Trevor Young

Are you struggling to cut through the noise and convey your message to the marketplace?

Become your own media channel and tell your stories like a PR pro!

We live in a fast-paced, digital-first world cluttered with brands and individuals telling the world how great they are. It’s no wonder consumers are so cynical and distrustful. They resent being interrupted with meaningless ads, pitches and promotional messages. They simply don’t care about you or your business—because you haven’t given them a reason to.

Meanwhile, marketers and PR pros are beginning to accept that many of the methods they’ve been using to reach potential customers and influencers simply don’t work anymore.

Bottom line: Standing out, getting noticed and resonating in the marketplace is a growing challenge for businesses and organizations, large and small.

Trust and reputation have never been more important in business.

Learn how to harness the power of both public relations and content marketing to build recognition, influence and credibility for your business, organization or personal brand.

In this book, veteran public relations practitioner and marketing speaker Trevor Young—aka “The PR Warrior”—shows you how to strategically use content marketing for PR to:

    - Humanize your company or organization

    - Deepen the connection your brand has with consumers

    - Grow your influence within the industry you operate 

    - Build familiarity and trust in the marketplace

    - Connect with the people who influence your clients and customers

    - Increase new business leads and sales

    - Reduce the customer’s buying cycle

    - Make paid-for advertising work harder

Written for entrepreneurs, change agents, business leaders, marketers and PR practitioners, Content Marketing for PR is your essential guide to building a visible brand that’s recognized, respected and relevant in today’s noisy social world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Citizen
• Release date: Sep 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648669616

Book preview

Trevor

THINK

1

Why You Should (and Shouldn’t) Read This Book

This book is for anyone who needs to get a story and a message out there.

For example, you might be the owner of a growing business, a startup entrepreneur or a managing partner in a professional services practice.

You might lead a charity or a nonprofit and have a cause or issue you need to build advocacy around.

You might be a public relations and communications practitioner looking for an edge in your day-to-day work.

Or you might just want to get your own story out there. You are the brand. Your business is based on your reputation and the trust people have in your personal brand.

Five reasons why you should read this book

Your brand needs more visibility and awareness in the marketplace, whether you are unknown or your entity is well established, but it needs to stand out more from the promotional noise that envelops us all, particularly online.

Reputation and trust are critical differentiators for your brand. In other words, people buy goods or services from your business, donate to your cause or vote for your issue because they are aware of your good reputation and trust you more than your competitors.

You need to enhance purchase consideration for your brand. In other words, it’s important for consumers to think of your business as their first choice for buying goods or services versus someone else’s. To accomplish this, you need to constantly give people reasons to buy from you, whether those reasons are logical or emotional, or both.

You’re looking to stay relevant in a world that’s evolving at warp speed. The media and marketing landscape is in constant flux, and this is not going to change any time soon. Digitally savvy consumers will increasingly flock to their arsenal of web-enabled devices for news, information and entertainment. At the same time, they’ll be blocking any overtly promotional messages. If you are relying on old-school marketing methods, you’re going to find it increasingly difficult to reach consumers and resonate with your target audience. This, in turn, is going to make it more and more difficult to grow as a business and, therefore, reach your commercial goals.

You are sick of all the noise and hype surrounding content marketing and social media. You definitely want to stay relevant and up-to-date. But the constant dump of information is all-consuming and you just need to avoid it for a while and start focusing more on what’s going to work for you and your brand. If this is the case, you’ll want to check out Chapter 8: Developing Your Own Content Marketing Philosophy.

One (and a half) reasons why you should not read this book

At the risk of doing myself out of potential readers, I have to say you probably won’t get much out of this book if you’re gunning for instant results. If you’re constantly on the lookout for ways to game the system or short-cut your way to success, in all likelihood you’ll end up disappointed. Why? Because there are no silver-bullet solutions in these pages. Just proven efforts and planning that lead to success over the longer term.

My so-called half reason is the following:

If you run a business and are looking to use content as part of a classic inbound marketing program— or you’re already well down this path — you’ll get value from this book for sure, but you might also be left wondering why I didn’t spend more time focusing on the construct known as the sales funnel, and how to use content specifically to direct people down said funnel towards a commercial transaction.

That’s because when you look at content through a PR lens, which is what we’re doing in this book, the approach is broader and more holistic than marketing on its own. In other words, there is a deeper role content can play in your business or organisation over and above directly influencing the sales process.

As we’ll see, there’s a lot more to public relations than just generating media coverage for your brand. Indeed, PR can help make the marketing function work more effectively overall.

When it comes to content, many marketing practitioners are focused purely on the sharper end of generating leads and sales, which is absolutely fine. That’s their job. But in a bid to make sales and hit their targets, they fail to give due credence to the things that often set up the sale in the first place. For example, trust and reputation, respect for the consumer, empathy and human connection.

Understanding this bigger picture – what goes on before the sales funnel, as it were - is critical in today’s consumer-empowered world where people are quick to block brands that hound them incessantly. And it’s only going to become even more important as the online environment becomes noisier and people become more distrustful and dismissive of brands.

I want to be crystal clear: This book is not anti-sales. Growing revenues for your business, of course, should be of the highest priority.

Likewise, if you’re a nonprofit relying on donations or a public identity requiring people to vote for you or your organization (and what you believe in), then these, too, are what I’d call commercial outcomes. And yes, whatever you do from the perspective of content marketing for PR needs to take these all-important goals into account.

But, I maintain that these outcomes often are merely by-products of the presence and influence you have in the marketplace, of your brand credibility and the trusted reputation you’ve managed to build. This foundation too often tends to get overlooked.

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This book is essentially about getting the foundational elements right first before jumping headfirst into pitch mode.

Too many businesses blindly focus on the sell. In other words, it’s all about them and their products and services. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t wash with consumers today. These days, the future belongs to those companies and organizations that take a genuine audience-first approach and that value human connection over commerce — understanding the latter is often a by-product of the former.

They understand that a key part of marketing today is about leveraging the power of social media and online publishing platforms to be useful, helpful, relevant and informative to the people who matter most to the success of their business, cause or issue.

2

Calling BS on How the World Sees PR

Before we stoke your enthusiasm too much about content and the role it plays in public relations, let’s address this vexed issue head-on.

What the heck is PR?

I bet if you asked 20 people in the street what PR is, you’d get 20 different answers. Actually, scratch that. You’d probably get variations of one answer that goes something like this:

PR is about getting your name in the press.

Not true, and it’s why so few marketers, business leaders and entrepreneurs get true value from their public relations efforts. How can you get full value from something if you devalue it in the first place?

Yes, PR people spend most of their time trying to get the name of their client (or employer) into newspapers and magazines, or on radio and television.

Only they don’t.

Some might. For some, that's what they focus on and they’re damned good at it. They’re called publicists, not PR practitioners.

Publicists perform an important role: promoting a brand, product or event via third-party media outlets, which today include nontraditional media such as blogs, podcasts and the like. Their work day-to-day tends to center around getting ink for their clients, and it can be tough, unrelenting and often thankless work. It’s nothing like the champagne-and-parties publicist lifestyle portrayed in the movies.

Media relations

The general public, including many journalists, often refer to publicists as PR practitioners, and so it’s totally understandable that people get the two professions mixed up.

Granted, the media relations function of PR is similar to the role publicists play. However, in many cases, it tends to be just one part of a broader, strategic communications program instigated on behalf of a business, government agency, nonprofit organization or individual promoting a professional personal brand.

As the name suggests, media relations in its purest sense focuses on building relationships between an organization’s representatives and relevant journalists, editors, broadcast producers, bloggers, and podcasters. This in itself requires longer-term thinking and a more strategic and collaborative approach.

That said, publicity pros, particularly those who specialize in a certain sector, be it sports, fashion, lifestyle or entertainment, will also have well-developed relationships with people in the media. The size and quality of their little black book of contacts represents a key part of their competitive advantage in the marketplace.

In his book Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck, marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin discusses what he sees as the distinction between PR and publicity.

Publicity is the act of getting ink, he writes, whereas PR is the strategic crafting of your story.

According to Godin, a PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest that you don’t bother getting ink or issuing a press release, he writes.

While there is more to PR than that, Godin is certainly on the right track.

Way back when

Back in the day, many of us in PR did act more like publicists. When I started out in public relations several decades ago, a good chunk of my work was centered on generating editorial exposure for my clients. But I also spent a fair bit of time planning, writing and editing client newsletters — what we would now call content.

Today, of course, things are very different and the practice of public relations has drastically evolved as the media landscape has changed.

For example, I know a number of PR practitioners who rarely would speak to a journalist these days, let alone issue a press release. It doesn’t mean they don’t deal with the media, it just means their day is consumed by many other tasks, such as:

MANAGING social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others

CREATING content for a client’s blog, podcast or YouTube channel

ORGANIZING an event for online influencers, who may, or may not, be bloggers

RESEARCHING, writing and publishing whitepapers, educational guides or special research reports

STAGING an event-based brand experience, public stunt or social experiment

LEVERAGING a brand’s sponsorship investment in a well-known sports property

MANAGING a community partnership initiative

CREATING an awards program demonstrating that a brand is supportive of a particular industry

PRODUCING content for social media that’s designed to spark conversation about a particular topic or issue

DEVELOPING a sub-branded multichannel communications platform off which multiple activities can hang. These can include, in addition to media relations, content creation, competitions and promotions, and sponsorship and events.

RUNNING a series of client-hosted roundtable events with key stakeholder groups important to the client’s business, cause or issue

ORGANIZING for a client’s CEO or internal subject matter expert to speak at an industry conference

TWEETING from or organizing video coverage of a client event

IDENTIFYING an issue that has the potential to inflict reputational damage to an organization and developing a strategy to manage the perceived impact of said issue

PLEASE NOTE: I sometimes use the word client because it’s often a PR agency’s consultants that do such work, but practitioners can also work in-house in bigger organizations. And if you’re a motivated individual who is, say, an aspiring thought leader trying to raise your profile or you run a growing business, these are all activities you can do yourself or you can hire a freelancer to help you.

In short, PR encompasses all of these things and more.

But despite the breadth and depth of the public relations remit, or maybe because of it, the industry still has an image problem. That’s pretty ironic given that PR is in the image business!

There is another public perception of PR that’s more fiction than fact, and it’s this:

People will tell you that public relations is something of a dark art.

That it’s all about spin.

Massaging the story.

Controlling the message.

Hiding the truth.

Pffft!

Those who focus on this type of activity will struggle to cut it in today’s noisy, digital-first world. It’s a distorted view, again perpetuated by traditional media — journalists who only see the PR people they deal with. What they don’t see is what PR pros do with the rest of their time; they are not exposed to other core elements of the PR discipline.

That said, PR’s reputation for spinning the message and distorting the truth steadfastly remains, much to the chagrin of public relations and communications professionals the world over. I won’t lie — there is definitely a portion of people associated with the profession who tread this path, who love playing cat-and-mouse games with the media. It’s all about them and their message, and often this will come at the expense of an open and authentic exchange of information. And yes, along the way, sometimes the truth can get twisted or compromised.

These practitioners, often former journalists, tend to focus on one-way message delivery through traditional media. To them, it’s a game, real us against them stuff, with them being the media, and by extension, the public. I’ve come across more than a few operatives like this in my time. They are often combative types encouraged by their employers to use tactics that today represent a very old school way of thinking.

Let’s call them for what they are — spin doctors — and they make up a minority of the PR profession. They are adept at what definitely has the potential to trickle into the dark side, but what they do is by no means illegal. It’s just dumb, particularly in this day and age when openness, transparency, and empathy in communications not only work but are attributes that people expect from companies and public organizations.

This insightful gem from the seminal book The Cluetrain Manifesto, published in 2000, sums up this situation brilliantly:

We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.

In other words, members of the public want those in charge of running businesses and organizations to communicate with them directly instead of just focusing on using the news media all the time.

I wanted to highlight this essential point before we go any deeper because if you think public relations is just about publicity and spin, then your perspective is likely skewed. If it is, you won’t get much value from the lessons in this book, and your PR efforts generally may not benefit.

In ensuing chapters, we’ll dissect what today’s PR looks like in action and how it can really help your brand stand out in the marketplace. Then, we’ll look at the content side of PR and how you can build a reputation and level of trust you’ve only dreamed about.

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WHAT DID WE LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER?

PR is a lot broader and deeper than just generating coverage in the media.

The PR remit today covers managing social media, creating content, running events, leveraging sponsorships and community partnerships, handling communication around potentially negative issues as well as media relations.

Today’s PR professional eschews spin, preferring openness and transparency in communications with stakeholders and the media.

3

Understanding What PR Is Today

In the previous chapter, we learned what public relations isn’t. It was important to cover this topic to ensure that we’re all on the same page.

Now, let’s look at what constitutes PR today and explore why the discipline is such a critical foundational element for any brand, and I do mean any brand, no matter what size or industry you play in.

This is key: If you grasp a basic understanding of what public relations is, how it works and the critical role it plays in building awareness, influence and trust for your brand, you will be better placed to practice it effectively and reap the rewards.

Public relations defined

In 2011 and 2012, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) set out to modernize the definition of public relations. It initiated and led a crowdsourcing campaign to canvas the views of its members. The accompanying public vote produced the following definition:

Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. ¹

Truth be told, it wasn’t all that different from previous theoretical definitions of public relations. While it’s accurate — that is what PR is about — it’s still very academic sounding.

Over in the UK, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) states that PR is about reputation: It is the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. ²

According to the CIPR website: Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behavior. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.

I like this definition, albeit it’s a little long-winded and still academic sounding.

If asked to provide a succinct definition of PR, I tend to run with this:

Public relations is about deepening the level of connection an entity (company, individual or organization) has with the people who matter most to the success of its business, cause or issue.

These people could be your clients or customers, employees, partners, industry influencers — such as analysts, bloggers, power tweeters, academics, thought leaders and subject matter experts — or journalists and broadcast media producers. Or they may be local councillors, government or business leaders, or members of a community group or industry body, if they’re somehow integral to the successful running of your business or organization.

Redefining PR: the Dublin Conversation

In May, 2018, associate lecturer at Dublin City University, Padraig McKeon, and Andy Green, a veteran UK-based PR practitioner and academic, kick-started a grassroots initiative called the Dublin Conversation, with a view to redefining and rejuvenating public relations. ³

According to Green’s Dublin Conversation whitepaper, earned trust is the pivotal touchstone of PR practice.

He writes: Earned trust underpins, and is at the heart of, a good reputation, relationships, influence, social capital and word-of-mouth.

Reputation

Relationships

Influence

Social capital

Word of mouth

All valuable outcomes that can be shaped strategically by public relations.

In an interview with Paul Cheal on Smoke Signal: a Public Relations Podcast, Green discusses a new theoretical canvas on which PR operates. It is based on work by Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and best-selling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, who identified five rules that govern all social interaction: being known, liked, trusted, front of mind and being talked about. ⁴

These commonalities of interaction, or heuristics, equate to familiarity, which leads to trust. Green says it is the element of trust where PR has an outstanding strength compared to other disciplines.

If you know those five simple rules, it therefore, then provides the map, the stage on which we operate from, Green told me in an interview. ⁵

I like the idea of using Kahneman’s five rules as an aspirational anchor for public relations.

We need to be asking ourselves continuously whether our PR efforts are helping our brand to be:

Better known

More liked

More trusted

Consistently front of mind with people

Talked about in a positive way in the marketplace

What PR can do

With that contextual backdrop in mind, let’s get down to essentials: What can PR do for your business or organization?

In essence, a strategic long-term public relations program can help:

Build recognition for your brand

Increase relevance and resonance with your audience

Establish and enhance your reputation

Develop and grow positive relationships with the people who matter most to the success of your business, cause or issue

These are all key factors in running a successful business or organization today. They are cornerstones of building a brand that people know, like and trust and that they want to do business with.

While other elements of the marketing communications mix can definitely provide value here — advertising, for example, can be effective in building widespread brand awareness — only a solid, ongoing, strategic PR program can provide the necessary reputational bedrock required for sustained success.

The value of PR

The full value of public relations will only be realized when planned strategically and executed on a long-term basis in a way that’s intentional, meaningful and sustainable.

This is when your entity — a business, nonprofit, government agency or your own personal brand — is a known quantity and has a strong reputation built on trust.

This means that people understand who you are and what you do, and most important, they know what you stand for. If they’ve reached the point of advocacy, they will — on your behalf and with no prompting — publicly say positive things about your brand both online and offline. You cannot buy this level of trust and advocacy; it needs to be earned through strategic efforts over time. Indeed, it’s a powerful lever for the types of commercial outcomes virtually all businesses and organizations are after in one way or another, such as:

More leads, sales and customers

More donors, subscribers or voters

More engaged employees who become willing ambassadors of your brand

When you become a known quantity with a strong reputation built on trust, you enjoy the most powerful and enduring position any business, organization or individual can be in. It carries a halo effect that lifts your brand above all others in your space. We all know the benefits that come with that: increased marketplace visibility and influence, growing respect and enhanced affinity, loyalty and purchase consideration.

PR works for all types of brands

As I’ve said, it’s not just businesses that can benefit from a savvy, ongoing public relations program. The following nonbusiness entities also benefit:

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) need public support for their cause, whether through personal advocacy, donations and grants, or both.

Government agencies often need to address issues within the broader community in order to change some kind of public perception or behavior.

Professional industry associations need to demonstrate leadership and relevance if they want to grow membership.

Politicians at all levels of government require a constant stream of positive media coverage and word-of-mouth buzz to keep winning the votes needed to hold their seat of power.

Public speakers and aspiring thought leaders require engaged audiences for their messages and ideas, while tech startups need users to sign up for their newly launched app, SaaS product or social network.

Let’s not forget the battle for talent: We are all vying for top talent somewhere along the line. Growing businesses and organizations need to be able to attract and retain smart, reliable employees if they are to continue to flourish. Reputation plays a crucial role here.

A research paper from ManpowerGroup Solutions, among the globe’s top multinational outsourcing providers, concludes that an organization’s reputation can impact its ability to recruit young talent.

Manpower surveyed 4,500 global job seekers for its 2016 report, Brand Detectives: The New Generation of Global Candidates. It found that more than half of global candidates (56 percent) said an employer’s brand or reputation was more important than in the previous five years.

The report states: . . . today’s candidates have more access to information about companies than ever before. The Google generation does not have to rely on what potential employers tell them about a company; they have instant access to news articles, social networks and employer review sites. ⁶

Building the foundations of PR

A strategic PR program should provide a business or nonprofit organization with a solid foundation from which it can functionally operate more effectively in other areas.

Take sales and marketing, for example. If people need to be educated about your product, service or cause before they are willing to commit, PR can help pave the way. If people already know, like and trust your brand, this can help reduce the sales cycle.

The same goes for advertising and promotions. PR can work organically day in and day out, all year round, getting people talking about your brand and keeping it top of mind with consumers. It can fill in the gaps between intermittent paid-for advertising campaigns as well as build a solid base that will make your promotional activities work harder.

There are countless other scenarios that illustrate the benefits of public relations.

Positive word of mouth, fueled by PR activity, can help drive business growth through strategic partnerships and alliances.

Recruitment of talent becomes easier if people are drawn to your organization, thanks in part to your PR efforts. Employee retention, too, becomes easier. If people constantly hear positive stories about their employer or if they better understand it, thanks to transparent communication from the top down, they will generally feel better about working there.

You get the idea. I’m definitely not saying PR is solely responsible for all of these areas of operation. But done with conviction and strategic intent, PR can definitely play a significant, influential role over the long term.

Brand versus reputation

PR has its fingertips on both brand and reputation.

Done well, it can help lay the foundation for a more sustainable and intentional corporate, organizational or personal reputation. Let’s face it: Reputation is paramount in today’s always-on, digital-first world. But so, too, is brand. It’s easy to confuse the two and important to understand the distinction.

Brand strategy expert Mark Di Somma writes on the website Branding Strategy Insider:

Ideally, in my view, you build a brand and a business on the back of a strong reputation, and you use the credibility and consistency of your reputation to attract the people, the investors, the leaders, the media interest and the stakeholder support needed to resource the organization and its brand(s). ⁷

BOOM! A brilliant summation right there by Mr. Di Somma.

Meanwhile, Richard Ettenson and Jonathan Knowles write in MIT Sloan Management Review that many executives talk about corporate reputation and brand as if they are one and the same. They are not, and confusing the two