Transformative Public Relations: 6 key strategies in the digital era

In today’s digital age, both traditional and digital marketing and public relations continue to benefit organizations in communicating brand messages, building reputation, and leveraging the wide variety of channels that now exist to increase visibility. However, modern technologies pose a new challenge by generating new forms of communication, behaviors, and information, making it essential for brands to be prepared to act appropriately, as the saying goes: “Forewarned is forearmed.”

Aware of concerns about what brands will need in this era and how they can leverage their digital public relations strategy, here are six key strategies that will help public relations give visibility to brands in the digital world:

1. More virtual events?

People are eager to receive and experience new hybrid experiences in both virtual and in-person environments.

Events have transformed their format; however, their objective remains the same: to extend the brand experience beyond four walls and maximize time and money invested by developing in online channels, allowing for greater reach and visibility of brands.

2. Discover changes in your buyer persona

Knowing our buyer persona is the starting point for any public relations and marketing strategy because their preferences, tastes, and needs change over time.

Researching and being clear about changes in consumer behavior will be a priority to connect with your buyer personas, thus ensuring the proper functioning of tactics and good campaign results.

3. Increase brand presence on social media

Now more than ever, due to their relevant and interactive nature, social media is a way for companies to connect directly with their consumers and other stakeholders.

Our brand can bet on the public relations tactics that suit it best, from relationship building with media, journalists, and use of influencers (companies can collaborate with influencers to reach new audiences and increase their online presence); to extending the reach of press mentions, content promotion, and paid advertisements (social ads), among others.

4. Online reputation and trust will be priorities

Now is the time when trust will be more critical than ever. Public relations play a fundamental role in transmitting the right message to the right people in the right place, as well as managing your brand’s online reputation (all those experiences, mentions, interactions, comments, and reviews that users share on the Internet through social platforms), which leads to new opportunities to increase awareness and credibility.

Brands require stable ground on which to build their foundations, and this can only be generated through trust and a good reputation. If a company wants to survive in the medium and long term, it will have to assume that reputation is a key issue for the business and that it must be managed through generating and increasing trust with all its audiences.

5. Master online content marketing

Content has proven that it remains king in the digital ecosystem.

Brands will have to reach and adapt to consumer habits and interests, circumstantially open to the digital environment, as in digital channels, consumers find in authoritative and valuable earned content and media the resource to stay informed, so content will continue on its throne.

6. SEO and inbound marketing will be critical for brands

SEO is the set of accessible and effective marketing techniques and strategies that brands have adopted to improve visibility and positioning in organic search results, and this resource will continue to be critical for inbound marketing strategies to work and for brands to build relationships online. Thanks to their ability in content generation activities, placing it at touchpoints, amplifying its reach, and generating interactions with the brand, public relations take a leadership role in improving traffic quality and brand positioning.

7. Social Listening

Now playing a role as prosumers, consumers post a lot of content on brands’ social media, make memes, give reviews, and even generate videos and valuable content when they are truly engaged with brands. That’s why paying special attention to social listening will be a key strategy for the future of public relations.

We must constantly monitor social listening and brand sentiment, as it becomes an important boost for the prevention of possible crises and improvement of Optimized PR plans and strategies.

8. Actionable KPIs to measure your PR efforts

The interest in evaluating PR efforts through key performance indicators (website traffic driven by coverage, organic search positioning, or engagement level, among others) with real impact and utility for decision-making will continue to grow. These KPIs will be possible thanks to the combination of PR professionals’ experience and knowledge and insights obtained from applications and systems that, with the help of technologies such as AI, monitor online channels, providing valuable data for immediate action and optimization of public relations strategies.

I am sure that each of the above points will be able to respond to the concerns of marketing professionals and take advantage of the complementarity of public relations.

Let’s remember that every change creates opportunities, and it’s better for our brand to be prepared and adopt a proactive public relations approach to the new consumer today and their changes in the future.