The Public Relations Blog

It seems like every top brand has built an internal public relations staff and retained a PR firm – and before you decide whether you’d benefit from doing the same, it’s important to answer a simple question: What does public relations do for a business?

In general terms, it’s easy to say that a PR team helps manage your messaging and improve the perception of your company and brand. But what does this mean for the way you do business, how you sell and your bottom line?

Content is not just content; it’s king

LinkedIn is the powerhouse platform for busy professionals looking to connect with one another. Unlike some of the other social media sites, you won’t find your LinkedIn news feed filled with cute photos of your friends’ children, food videos and memes. But what you will find are entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 CEOs, financial professionals and many others sharing posts related to their industries.

Too often, corporations set out on ambitious new projects or marketing campaigns without taking time to consider media relations.

That may be because the task of spreading the word through traditional publishing channels and media outlets takes too much time, and the performance of each media hit is hard to measure. What many business leaders don't realize is that this arm of communications is vital to long-term success.

4 ways to use PR proactively for increased profitability

When you want to communicate better with your customers, build relationships, solve problems, boost credibility and influence buyer decisions, who do you call? You may be surprised to learn that the answer is a public relations firm.

If you only use public relations when there is a crisis, then your business could be in trouble. Even worse, you are falling behind your competitors who do use PR to its full advantage. It’s in your best interest to learn more about this important field and how it can deliver results.

Benefits may not outweigh outsourcing social media

Your marketing and communications department may rely on various public relations companies. PR agencies provide businesses with critical social media support, creativity and connections. However, social media, when managed or co-managed internally, may offer many additional benefits.

Let PR show you how to use this vital tool successfully

Have you noticed how some companies seem to be masters at social media while others are still floundering, sputtering and completely lost? With so much riding on social media success, you want to make sure that your company is one of the former.

Learn how you compare with others in your industry and how to improve social media ROI

Are your social media efforts working for you? Sure, you have a presence on all the relevant social media platforms and you receive periodic feedback from customers, but do any of these things increase your market share or improve your brand? How can you find out?

Let’s face it. Social media is a waste of time unless it helps you achieve measurable results. This includes knowing if you are gaining leads and how your efforts stack up against the competition. Now there is a resource that can help.

Photographs are key in achieving viral success

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or perhaps today, pictures are worth hundreds of shares, thousands of retweets and a million likes.

In the last few weeks, several New York businesses have earned social media stardom simply because someone was smart enough to photograph their products and post them on Instagram. Black Tap Craft Burgers and Beer, The Bagel Store (Brooklyn) and Eggloo have all received major viral push across just about every social media platform due to their unique – and beautifully photogenic – consumables.

Many professionals today remain stumped by social media and the various platforms, each with their own unique rules and nuances. Often, businesses tend to use social media as a one-trick pony – and only as an additional sales tool. Public relations practitioners, however, understand that social media represents limitless possibilities to extend two-way communication. Social media is, at its core, an environment for engaging dialogue – with all its humor, frustration and inquisition included.  

Avoid these missteps to use Twitter to its full advantage

You’ve consulted with experts and dedicated a staff member to handle social media. The company Facebook page looks phenomenal and your LinkedIn articles get viewed and shared periodically. You post to Twitter also, but are you sure you’re doing it correctly?

Some social media sites, like Google+, are easily adaptable for businesses. Others, like Twitter, can be more complicated, and it’s easy for companies to make reputation-crushing mistakes. Learn the right (and wrong) ways to use Twitter for brand recognition and consumer engagement.