Blurred Lines: Digital PR vs Traditional PR

The Integration

The year 2020 was a year of change for many of us – on both a personal and professional front. The COVID-19 pandemic altered our perspective on everything and hastened the transformation of the public relations industry – one which is prone to constant change.

This has also affected the way PR professionals work and hence how brand stories are told. It is a fact that although a brand story cannot be fabricated, a PR professional is trained to help brands delve deep into the specifics that make companies unique.

Considering the huge number of entities that are launched every day in each genre and industry, it is important that your businesses has an USP that makes it stand out and ultimately find long-term success. In today’s world, it is critical to weave your brand’s message into a narrative that touches people and elicits an emotional response.

We live in a fast paced world of information. Engaging with and interacting with brands and media has changed from what it used to be a few years ago. Things that used to be unthinkable are today a part of our day to day routine.

Today, PR cannot function without digital marketing and vice versa – the two fields complement each other. To be successful in today’s competitive and ever evolving business world, brands need to learn how to combine the best traditional PR tactics with modern online marketing techniques to promote their brands and get the desired results.

PR professionals today are expected to be familiar with all relevant digital tools, including mobile apps, social media channels, blogs, SEO, and email marketing. Traditional public relations and digital marketing appear unrelated, which is why many businesses continue to separate the two — PR and digital marketing teams have separate objectives, tasks, and budgets. However, more and more businesses are quickly realising that combining these is perhaps a better approach because they share some common goals.

For example, the goal of public relations is to tell stories that create a positive image of your brand. Take blog posts, for example. Blogs can be used in content marketing to tell those stories. You can use email to share those stories for a more direct impact. Those who have not yet begun to integrate their PR and marketing efforts are perhaps lagging behind.

The Evolution

With the methods you employ, you can target various types of audience. Social media and email campaigns are excellent ways to do so.

As public relations professionals are known for their verbal and written communication skills, creative thinking, and a positive yet critical approach to communications, all of these characteristics are vital in retaining and acquiring brand loyalty and networking with audiences from various demographics.

It also helps a brand connect better with customers at psychographic levels, across several digital assets such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The PR professionals benefit from audience engagement, influencer management, brand awareness, brand collaborations, client and customer relationship building, and much more.

Quality backlinks are one of the most reliable and tested digital strategies for increasing your Search Engine Ranking. The digital PR teams can boost SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking, generate quality traffic, and increase brand awareness and prospective leads by publishing relevant and engaging content with backlinks to the brand’s website.

Authoritative and influential back-linking can also be increased by cultivating relationships with influencers, bloggers, editors, authors, and industry experts. And, all of this contributes to improved strategy.

It is therefore high time that brands start thinking in the direction of a collaborative PR approach that integrates the best of both worlds – traditional and digital.

How we can humanise PR?

How can we achieve this by transforming our approach to communicating with the media?

1. Getting to know you: We need to learn more about the people we deal with on a regular basis by sensitively searching out common ground through LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media platforms. When done considerately, this can reveal shared hobbies, interests or backgrounds, sparking an excellent relationship from the word go.
2. Eliminate impersonal communication: Let’s say goodbye to the BCC email once and for all and tailor our approach to every contact based on our understanding of their preferences, interests and personality. Take the time to customise your communication and send original emails to each individual.
3. Face-to-face communication: We live in a digital world, but you still can’t beat a face-to-face meeting. Don’t let your relationship be limited to your inbox or mobile phone – branch out and have the confidence to meet in person. Putting a face to a name is essential for establishing a human connection and building a relationship.
4. Show respect: This should be obvious, but is sometimes neglected. Showing respect for your media contacts involves honouring agreed deadlines, and maintaining a professional relationship by contacting them a reasonable amount at sensible times, and only with content that is relevant to their publication.
5. Mutual benefits: A good relationship is a two-way street. In return for showing interest in our stories and publishing our content, we must give back by providing the media with market insights, quotes and reports that we believe could be helpful to them in their job. This will be much appreciated by them and create a mutual arrangement.

At the end of the day, nobody likes receiving another standard email that has been sent to hundreds of other addresses. Let’s personalise our approaches to the media; it’s worth a shot to humanise our profession.

Adnan Wahidi is Account Executive at Cicero & Bernay Public Relations, an independent PR agency headquartered in Dubai offering new-age public relations consultancy to the UAE and across the MENA region. | www.cbpr.me