What is Content Marketing and its role in an Optimized Public Relations strategy?
Content marketing is a marketing strategy focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and drive profitable action (Content Marketing Institute). In the realm of digital public relations, it becomes an essential tool to enhance brand visibility, increase website traffic, and generate business opportunities.
Within an optimized public relations strategy, content marketing enables companies to gain exposure through:
- Traditional Media: Effectively communicating the company’s key messages to the target audience, building and maintaining a positive brand image, as well as generating trust, credibility, and positioning as a leader in the industry.
- Digital Media: Enhancing brand presence in the online world, engaging audiences with relevant content that captures their attention and compels them to take action, as well as driving brand visibility in search results and increasing high-quality traffic to their website through optimized content (featuring keywords and backlinks).
The Role of Content Marketing in an Integrated Communication strategy
The Blended Media Model – Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned – is a methodology that integrates different communication tactics and channels into an integrated communication strategy. Content marketing plays a relevant role in this approach as it becomes the cornerstone for connecting and aligning the different components of the Blended Media Model.
- Paid Media: In a digital public relations campaign, paid media is an excellent tool to amplify earned media and promote owned media through paid boosts, such as digital advertising on Google and social ads.
- Earned Media: The use of multimedia content in PR helps increase brand exposure, online presence, and reach more rapidly, as well as improve its positioning in search results and drive website traffic through strategic content distribution in online media and social platforms, with the help of influencer marketing strategies.
- Shared Media: Content marketing is key to driving audience engagement on social platforms by leveraging owned and contributed content, posts, and media mentions to stimulate buzz marketing, increase reach, and generate engagement with our audiences (eWOM).
- Owned Media: Essential for fueling with valuable and relevant content – property owned and controlled by the brand, such as blog, website, or social media channels – that allows effective communication with our stakeholders.
“Did you know?”
- 90% of consumers find personalized content useful. (Demand Metric).
- 72% of marketers say that content is an effective strategy for generating leads. (Contently).
- 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company through content rather than traditional advertising. (Content Marketing Institute).
Benefits of Content Marketing in Your Digital Public Relations Strategy
By creating high-quality, engaging, and valuable multimedia content that meets the needs and expectations of your audiences, a wide range of benefits unfolds for organizations that adopt content marketing as an integral part of their public relations strategy. These benefits can help you achieve your business objectives. Some of these include:
- Build trust and credibility: By creating valuable and relevant content and leveraging the reach and credibility of media outlets, journalists, and micro-influencers, both traditional and digital public relations serve as a powerful tool for conveying the values of organizations and paving the way towards establishing a trustworthy brand.
- Create a story that conveys the essence of the brand: The art of storytelling is a potent means of effectively communicating the brand’s value proposition and humanizing it, while also engaging and influencing purchasing decisions through emotional connections with audiences.
- Increased online visibility: Amplify your brand’s online exposure on digital channels and social platforms, expanding your reach to new audiences and making your brand discoverable.
- Enhanced online brand reputation: Contribute to building trust, credibility, and a positive perception of your brand.
- Positioning the brand as an industry leader: Through content that demonstrates expertise in your area of knowledge, you can establish yourself as a reference in your sector and stand out from your competition.
- Improved search engine positioning (SEO): Boost your ranking in search results by increasing quality, dwell time, bounce rate, and organic (search) and referral (clicks) website traffic.
- Generate evergreen content: Get spaces that maintain their relevance and usefulness over time (Inbound Marketing), becoming a sustainable source of traffic for your website.
- Foster audience interaction: Encourage your audiences to engage with your brand through comments, questions, or content sharing, boosting engagement. Additionally, it helps you better understand your customers and establish strong and lasting relationships with them.
- Attract and retain customers: Content marketing also assists organizations in reaching new audiences, maintaining the interest of current customers, and fostering their loyalty by offering valuable information and content.
To achieve these objectives, it is crucial to design a content marketing strategy that considers the characteristics and needs of the target audience and adapts to different channels and formats.
Building a Successful Content Marketing Strategy for Your Optimized Public Relations
A successful content marketing strategy considers different key components that enable brands to achieve their communication and marketing objectives. These include:
- Goal definition: Improve brand reputation, increase online visibility, generate interaction, or drive sales, for example.
- Channel and format selection: Choose the most suitable ones for the audience and strategy objectives and adapt the content to each social platform.
- Creation of an editorial calendar: Plan the creation and distribution of content over time, including information about topics, formats, publication dates, and responsible parties for each content piece.
- Production and distribution of digital content: This content must be valuable, relevant, and consistent – shared regularly and coherently across different digital channels and social platforms.
- Measurement and analysis of results (Actionable KPIs): Establish key performance indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy and make decisions to optimize it.
Content Types for Your Optimized Public Relations Campaigns
There are different types of multimedia content that you can use in your optimizedl public relations campaigns. However, it is important to choose the appropriate formats for your content marketing strategy based on your target audience, the channels and platforms through which they will be distributed, and your campaign objectives.
a. Written content: Blog articles and collaborations with media outlets, press releases, success stories, e-books, etc.
b. Visual content: Infographics, illustrations, GIFs, presentations, etc.
c. Audiovisual content: Videos, podcasts, webinars, etc.
How to Distribute Your Content through Online Channels and Social Platforms in an Optimized Public Relations Strategy
To distribute your content through online channels and social platforms as part of a digital public relations strategy, it is important to follow some key steps:
a. Choose the appropriate digital channels: Identify where your target audience is online, which social networks they use, and their preferred content platforms. Each online channel has different characteristics and formats, so adapting the content to each one and to how the target audiences read, listen, watch, and consume content is indispensable.
b. Plan your distribution strategy: Maximize the reach and effectiveness of your content by capitalizing on strategic moments such as seasonal events, newsjacking, or industry trends. Additionally, consider promoting content through digital advertising or collaborating with influencers in your plan.
Unleash the Potential of Content Marketing in Your Optimized Public Relations Strategy and Conquer the Digital World
As an essential tool in conquering the digital world, content marketing continues to have an invaluable impact. By continuously refining this approach in your digital PR strategies, you will ensure maximizing the impact of your content marketing strategy and obtaining the best results for your business.
Leverage its full potential and consistently convey key messages with a relevant and captivating focus that resonates in the minds and hearts of your target audiences, generating trust and credibility for your brand, building a positive image, and positioning it as an indisputable leader in your industry.