In the past five years, public relations has been transformed by the development of online activities, forcing practitioners to either reevaluate their techniques or become irrelevant.
The development of online public relations can be divided into three separate branches ”“ search engine marketing, website development and social media ”“ and should first be analyzed by showing why public relations is essential to each.
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing provides an online parallel to the overriding goal of public relations, increasing the clients”™ visibility, and this is achieved by improving your ranking on SERPs (search engine results pages) for your most important keywords.
Inbound links, clickable text on other sites pointing to your own, represent the most effective way of improving your ranking and they can be created by drafting valuable content and getting it published online.
The distribution of an online press release with your URL included will create an inbound link from every site where it is published. Other online venues to generate inbound links and affect SERPs include blogs, content provision sites and directories.
An inbound linking campaign directly impacts public relations because the drafting of vendor-neutral content represents one of its primary techniques.
Web site development
Websites most obviously relate to public relations because they require a persuasive, factual writing style. You need to grab the visitor”™s attention and keep it.
Yet unlike bylined articles or traditional press releases, the online PR professional must know how to subtly incorporate keywords in website text without affecting the visitor”™s experience.
In addition to sophisticated writing skills, website development should include the creation of an online media room with a prominent link on the top navigation bar. These media rooms should be maintained by the public relations consultant. To do so requires a fundamental knowledge of html and the ability to create new web pages through user-friendly programs such as Microsoft”™s Dreamweaver.
Social media
The rise of social media has received the most attention of the three branches described in this article and often causes both public relations practitioners and their clients to neglect the other two.
Still, the establishment of a Twitter account and an outpost on Facebook Pages offers access to a whole new group of prospective customers and represents the bare minimum for involvement in this rapidly evolving phenomenon. However, participation in social media also presents some unique pitfalls for those more acclimated to traditional PR.
Prior to generating content for any social media site, the public relations professional should use a technique facetiously labeled “lurking.” In other words, you should observe the nature of interactions on a social media site before jumping into the online conversation.
Online strategy
Generally, you should avoid writing blatantly promotional material and provide links to interesting articles in your field instead. For any involvement in online interactions, you should also understand the difference between the push and pull models of public relations.
In traditional public relations, you must use a figurative megaphone to “push” out press releases and promote your services, but in an online environment, such an effort could lead to blocking, or worse. In online PR, you need to let your potential clients find you instead of the other way around. This can be accomplished by creating a strong website and increasing your online visibility in myriad ways.
The fields of online PR described above have evolved powerful new synergies. Their use for public relations will be described in a future column.
Willy Gissen is president of Cut-It-Out Communications Inc., a public relations agency in Hartsdale. Reach him at wgissen@cutitoutcommunications.com and at www.cioediting.com.
