Secret #7: The Line Between PR and Marketing is Blurry.

Even though you feel your company is the most amazing thing in the world, it doesn’t mean a reporter will, and it certainly doesn’t mean that a reporter will write a story about you. Good press has to be earned. One way to earn good press is to have a marketing strategy that complements your PR efforts. This is required with the advent of social media, and how it’s transformed both marketing and PR. A solid PR strategy needs to include some aspects of marketing, especially social media marketing, or you will leave a lot of great PR opportunities on the table.

Nowadays, you can consider social media the tip of the PR spear since lots of stories, posts and pictures go viral without having to pitch them to reporters or media outlets. This makes it even more important that your social media marketing strategy has a PR component or at the very least, you’ll need to have a process in place when your social media posts go viral.

Always Be Building Relationships

Building relationships with reporters is critical to getting good coverage. Those relationships start by reaching out to them before you need coverage and being helpful when they ask for something. Follow them on social media, share their posts and comment when appropriate. Interact with them periodically, so that they know that you are active and not just an opportunist.

Even though the Internet is a vast space, our brains have gotten much more impatient, and we now only want to take in the most interesting articles and information before we quickly move on to the next thing. That has made it so reporters will ONLY cover the most interesting and compelling topics, from sources they trust. Because, after all, reporters are writing articles for the readers they serve, not for your company!

Be of Service to Others

Like most humans, reporters like people who are helpful and contribute actively to the community. This service to others is a valuable component of both a PR strategy and a social media marketing strategy. The best PR will be bestowed upon you by others who have found your product or service useful or by some unique and novel aspect of your company that a reporter has uncovered. This is why being a good community member, within you industry, can set the stage for great PR opportunities.

It’s human nature to want to help those that have helped us. Social media marketing, when done right, is a great way to help others by giving them valuable facts and tips to make their lives easier. As you build up your social media and PR creditability, more and more opportunities will come your way simply because you or your company will be at the top of a reporters mind or even better, the top of social search results. Win, win for everyone.

Good Social Media is the New PR. Well Sorta

The line between PR and Marketing is slowly becoming blurred because of social media. Social Media is all about building brand awareness which is exactly what PR is meant to do. Good social media, like good PR, will build your brand equity so that when a potential customer wants your product or service, all the great PR and social media you have accumulated over the years will pay off.

To be clear, PR is not marketing’s red-headed stepchild. You still have to have a solid PR strategy to augment your social media marketing strategy to create those moments that will raise awareness for your brand, company and founders.

Good PR professionals and firms know that social media will never replace PR. PR will always be the best way for a company to get the word out about it’s products and services. A solid social media marketing strategy will make getting reporters to cover you a whole lot easier. Make sure that any and all campaigns you run have both a PR and social media component. It will pay off big time in the long run.

Stumbled Upon This?

This post is part of a 7 part series titled 7 PR Secrets Every Founder Should Know But Are Not Told. If you stumbled upon this searching the innerwebs, please join us for the full series. I would really appreciate it.