10 Mistakes Your Traditional PR Company Is Making When It Comes To Digital

Alex Jones 9 years ago

Like most professions these days, the rise of digital is having an enormous effect on the world of PR. With swathes of data insight available to webmasters and marketers, gone are the days of counting column inches. These days clients who fork out for public relations are after metrics slightly more hi-tech…or at least they should be.

Not only has the criteria changed, but the methodology has too. CRM tools, email tracking software and the chance of almost instant publication means that modern PR is a very different beast to the one operating not even a decade ago.

Practices that were commonplace then, are outdated now and whilst there is a lot to learn from PR’s past, there is also a lot to avoid, especially in their approach to digital.

With that in mind, let’s delve into some of the mistakes traditional PR companies are often making…

Lack of SEO knowledge

Most modern PR professionals will have a rudimentary understanding of SEO, but in the era of Google, rudimentary isn’t going to cut it.

Optimising press releases to boost rankings for specific keywords is commonplace nowadays, and if you’re not doing it, you should be.

Links are another point of contention. If you’re reading this, you know they’re important, but guess what, those PR agencies without that SEO knowledge do not.

Do you really want a campaign launched in 2015 without an emphasis on gaining at least a few quality links?

Over use of newswires

Upload your press release, click send and job done…right? Not quite. As the old saying goes, nothing worth doing is ever easy. Unfortunately, newswires facilitate content, which is the polar opposite of what Google is looking for.

Like anything, there are a few notable exceptions, but for the most part the newswire is to be used with caution. Not only will the content fail to reach a significant number of eyeballs, but the distribution could very well end up gaining you links from poor quality crawler sites.

Reporting content on crawler sites

Speaking of crawler sites… any of your content picked up by these sites isn’t worth reporting. Pretty obvious, but I have seen PR agencies include these sites in their reports in an attempt to bulk up the coverage numbers.

Any content placed on a major news outlet will most likely be scraped and re-pasted on these ‘spam’ sites in an attempt to gain a few clicks from unsuspecting web users.

That is not legitimate coverage. It adds no value. None. Don’t report on it. Stop it.

Always sticking to the same publications/sites

Targeting the nationals is great; every business likes to hear you’re approaching the big guns with their content. Unfortunately, these publications are bombarded with emails from dawn to dusk, and no matter how hard you try, sometimes your luck’s out.

That’s where audience research is key. Often a client will tell you a few industry publications they’d like to target on top of the usual array, but PR is, in part, a numbers game and the more options available to you the better.

With CRM tools, content analysis tools such as Buzzsumo and ranking tools including Majestic and SEMrush, the digital PR can accurately target which websites are read by a client’s customers and whether any coverage obtained on it will be beneficial to the campaign.

Not understanding the power of social media

With the exception of perhaps a limited understanding of Facebook and Twitter, traditional PR agencies often miss the opportunity to amplify the impact of coverage using social media.

Paid search opportunities are becoming more and more important to the success of big campaigns.

With Facebook’s algorithm now making it essentially a paid platform for businesses, a post on your wall will reach a max 10% of your audience…not exactly getting the message out there.

It is important therefore to know how to boost posts through Facebook advertising or use content promotion platforms such as Taboola or Outbrain to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible in the hope of getting that content to go viral.

Over reliance on print

Print media still carries something of a wow factor when presented to clients, I mean who doesn’t like seeing their company featured in a newspaper or magazine?

Unfortunately, the limitations of the format are substantial, and with many traditional PR agencies still pushing a print-over-digital mentality, your business’s exposure may very well be short lived, except for the odd clipping to stick on the office wall. It is vital to get that article published on the media’s website too to ensure the content has a much longer shelf life.

Failing to track progress

Column inches, circulation data and coverage compared to the cost of an advert. These are all practices that are still alive and well in the world of traditional PR, in fact selling these methods to a client is an art form in itself!

They are a way of trying to measure the immeasurable, I mean no one knows if the people reading the magazine have even glanced at your content, let alone read it.

Needless to say, with social shares, page views and referrals, the success of a placement is so much easier to track. There’s no need for estimates, the data is available to you through Google Analytics.

Failing to pinpoint what made the campaign a success

There’s no better feeling than a campaign gaining traction. You’ve pitched in the release to the press, it’s appeared on a few big sites and now the organic shares and articles commenting on your content are rolling in.

So, what was it about the campaign that made it such a success? Was it the idea, the timing, the contacts or a bit of everything?

Traditional PR agencies can only guess what the catalyst was, and usually opt to never investigate further.

Digital PR agencies on the other hand, have access to data during every part of a campaign, from conception, audience insight, to the angles used to pitch into the media.

Take this last step for example; this is where email-tracking software comes into its own. Using an add on such as Hubspot’s Sidekick, digital PR agencies can accurately report if a contact opened their email, at what time and how many times.

Not only this, but by sending emails with alternative titles, we can create a graph showing the success rate of each pitch and determine which approach is more effective.

Failing to spot what went wrong/not learning from past mistakes

Just as important as picking out what went right, is determining what could be improved upon.

This is especially difficult for the traditional PR, with no data to go on; offering reasons why, can often feel like a stab in the dark. Unfortunately, most of the time this means the campaign is marked down as a failure and all the work attributed to it a waste of time, but this is hardly ever the case.

You’d be amazed what a little tweaking to a campaigns strategy can do. Perhaps the pitch wasn’t worded correctly, maybe the target audience was wrong or maybe you launched it a few months too late?

With digital PR and it’s plethora of tools and data, every campaign can be scrutinised and with that lessons learned and acted upon to further future efforts.

Not evolving past the press release

With traditional PR you have one outlet, the press release. The news you want to pitch in to the media is displayed in a couple of pages of text, perhaps a few images. Hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it right?

Embracing the world of content marketing is what digital PR is all about. Don’t get me wrong, the press release still has a role to play, but thanks to these content marketing techniques we now have alternatives such as infographics, guest articles and interactive content to pitch into the media as well.

Receiving a piece of all-singing and all-dancing content can be much more effective than a page of Times New Roman.

Conclusion

After it’s all said and done, there is only one thing that matters to a client. Has interest in their business increased, and has this interest converted into something tangible?

This presents both clients and traditional PR agencies with a dilemma. If there is an increase, is this just a coincidence? As a business they need to be sure that their investments are worthwhile, and that’s where the data-informed approach of digital PR once again wins out.

Using a plethora of ranking tools such as Searchmetrics, SERPS and AHrefs, the modern digital PR agency can pinpoint exactly where traffic increases came from, and how the work its done was beneficial to the cause.

Getting your name out there is vital. Rising above the noise and standing out from the crowd is what every PR agency, whether traditional or digital strives to do.

Traditional PR has done great things in the past, but the media landscape is changing dramatically, and failing to move with it is a dangerous game.

Forwards ever backwards never.

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