PR and Content Marketing: Two sides of the same coin

How to successfully combine your PR and Content Marketing efforts

Content marketing and public relations (PR) are very similar in nature. One can even say that they are two sides of the same coin. Most people thought that with the emergence of social media, public relations (PR) may become irrelevant. But it didn't. Instead, it started using different approaches than the age-old methods of engagement and publicity. This post offers tips on why you need to combine content marketing with PR and how to do it successfully.

Why Combine Content Marketing with PR and Vice Versa

As PR and content marketing share a common goal, there is a great deal to be gained by harnessing a hybrid approach. Here is why any PR firm should be combining PR and content marketing strategies.

Offers Consolidated Platform for Sharing Ideas

Whether you are a content marketer or a PR professional, it is your responsibility to keep track of latest developments and trends across multiple industries. When you combine public relations (PR) with content marketing strategy, it offers a centralized platform to exchange ideas between your content marketing and PR teams. The insights from the PR team can help the content marketing team to create content that resonates with the latest market trends. On the other hand, the creative ideas coming from content marketers will help your PR team to understand what type of content your target audience wants to read.

Facilitates Content Outreach

With approximately 2.5 exabytes of data produced every day, it's getting harder to stand out in the digital realm. Even the most carefully crafted content will do no good unless it reaches your potential customers in time. This is where PR comes in. When you combine PR with your content marketing strategy, it becomes a lot easier to publish your content on a reputable website or blog.

This combination can also help you acquire a broader, newer audience. Plus, it helps you send a unified brand message across multiple digital platforms including online publications and social media channels. For a breakdown of the different content marketing channels you need to consider, see our content marketing matrix:

Build Trust and Relationships

Any PR professional worth their salt knows that building a mutually beneficial relationship with top influencers, journalists, and editors is one of the biggest challenges in public relations. By combining PR and content marketing, you can put more impactful and readymade content into the hands of influencers and journos regularly. When you share well-written content with them, they are more likely to connect with you. At the end of the day, this translates into success for building a symbiotic relationship and trust with them.

Improves Your SEO Efforts

As press releases are often shared extensively on the Internet, they can be a powerful search engine optimization tool. However, due to their lack of SEO knowledge, most PR professionals fail to exploit press releases to boost SEO efforts. However, when combined with content marketing, you can optimize your press releases with built-in keywords. You will be able to create press releases with valuable inbound links, leading to increased traffic to your website. This can be the ultimate game-changer in your conventional content marketing strategy.

How to Combine Content Marketing with PR

When they work in tandem, public relations (PR) and content marketing can produce excellent results. The integration of these two channels will vary depending on your business structure and the available resources. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Identify Each Team Member’s Strengths

Though public relations (PR) and content marketing share the same goals, each takes a different approach to reach them. That's why you need to identify the strengths of each team at your disposal. Chances are PR professionals don't know SEO and the content marketing team doesn't know PR. So, the first thing you need to do is identify the expertise of each team member and their job roles. For example, content marketing experts usually focus on addressing problems that your target audience has and connect them to a relevant product or service. However, this isn't a part of the job of a PR counterpart, but he/she certainly understands how to reach the right people. The bottom line is they won't be able to use each other's strengths if they keep working in silos.

Plan Campaign Themes Together

With more than two teams working together, the team members are more likely to come up with multiple themes and story ideas. That's why both, content marketing and PR teams need to plan campaign themes together. Planning together will ensure that your company is not promoting two different things at the same time. Both teams also need to plan how they are going to assign tasks to different team members because delegating responsibilities based on team member's job profile will only help your campaign. This tactic will also help you come up with shared editorial and promotion calendars based on your business priorities and seasonal requirements.

Combine Content Creation Efforts

PR professionals, as well as content marketers, create high-quality content on a regular basis, but for two distinct types of target audiences. If you ask each team member to collaborate on content creation, it will allow you to generate better results. These combined content creation efforts will enable your team members to pull content that can be repurposed to make your media outreach more straightforward and succinct. This will also help you run a smooth brand awareness campaign without having to wrestle for additional resources.

Communication Is the Key

In the end, it all boils down to how effectively both teams communicate with each other. With multiple teams collaborating on various marketing campaigns, it’s easy to lose track of the process. You need to make sure that each team member is up-to-date on the latest developments to avoid wasting resources and time. Weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your team members may be required as there is no substitute for in-person conversations. This is probably the best way to keep each other in the loop.

Conclusion

Integrating content marketing with public relations is one of the best ways to survive in an increasingly crowded digital space. The power of this partnership can provide you with unmatched marketing potential. The above tips will help you figure out why you need this partnership and how to make them work in unison.

Thanks to Brian for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Brian Zeng is the owner of Ponbee.com. He is an entrepreneur by spirit. Through Ponbee, Brian would like to share his insights on an array of topics related to business, e-commerce, digital marketing and entrepreneurship.