Estilo Communications

Things are changing faster than ever in the PR world. The Internet changed everything, but it took until people truly started communicating en masse for the changes to become apparent.

I don’t have to sell you on the power of social media and “non-traditional” presence; the media and every other PR professional and web expert has already done that.

You know these tools can be effective, but focusing on them as the beginning and end of a communications campaign is problematic.

Viral videos are a perfect example. They create a wellspring of attention to a message you have crafted. But in making this message popular, you’ve had to distill away most of your substance.

Viral videos can spill through to your more content-rich efforts, and they can certainly build brand. But if you focus on the hundreds of thousands of YouTube views, instead of qualifying their impact, the campaign can lose its edge.

Traditional marketing and publicity was very simple and self-contained. This new breed dabbles with specialization. Viral leads to subtle brand-awareness. PDF whitepapers lend themselves to customer education.

The first step of any publicity campaign should be an orientation of what tools yield what results. Here is an overview of some of the tools that may be on your radar screen and what to expect from them:

1. Search Engine Optimization: This isn’t a silver bullet for traffic, but investing time in SEO will maximize the potential for visitors to your site. You can reach diminishing returns on time invested, so make sure that you don’t stress so much over SEO to neglect other important areas of your marketing plan.
   
2. Viral Content: If you have an interesting story to tell or a great way to tell it, take advantage. The “new” publicity is all about voice, which is all about showing your human side. If you can be funny or original, or even very professional and thought provoking, package that message to raise brand awareness.
3. Blogging: Nothing crafts as coherent and definable an identity as having a frequently used blog. Blogs allow for the voice of the organization to present their positions to the public forum.
4. Social Networking: Allows you to leverage existing contacts to make every other publicity activity easier. It works well in conjunction with things you are already doing, because the barrier to action is quite low on the part of the audience. They don’t have to do much to be a contributor.
5. CPC Advertising: Internet advertising is far more scalable than most forms of marketing. It has the added benefit of getting potential clients to your page in direct proportion to the budget you spend. Not many other forms of marketing offer that level of certainty over budget.
6. Podcasting/Video Podcasting/etc.: Nowadays, inexpensive recording tools and loads of creativity are all you need to amass a daily or weekly audience online. If you make them interesting and useful, podcasts – digitally distributed recordings akin to radio shows – and video podcasts will get you the traffic you need at a reasonable price.

We will continue to write about these topics in the newsletter, so if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe.

If you have any questions about Internet marketing or any other public relations issue, drop us a line at either philip at estilopr dot com or roberto at estilopr dot com.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.