6 Elements of Modern Public Relations

Communication is a continuous process which keeps evolving with the emerging technologies. A vital part of communication, Public Relations has also been developed over the time and technological advancements.

Humans started communication with postcards, banners, posters, books, newspapers and then came radio and televisions and now reached a digital age. Today traditional mediums have become outdated and digital media has taken over the major part of the modern public relations industry.

Let’s have a deeper look into elements of modern public relations, which we all need to know in 2021.

6 elements of modern pr

1. Targeting

Until about a few years back, content creators had very limited information about their target audience’s persona. PR professionals used to create and distribute the common messages for everyone through the traditional mediums like newspapers and magazines.

Today, in the age of digital media, it is possible to track online activities of a user. It takes a few clicks to know about the target audience’s metrics. Knowing our target audience before creating content helps us to create customized and targeted campaigns. With the help of this data, we can build effective messages which touch emotions of people based on their age, area and interests.

Therefore, significant time is required on researching the target audience before writing a word for your PR message. We can easily research keywords and trends with tools like Google Trends, Google Analytics, SEMrush or Ahrefs etc.

2. Personalization

The primary goal of mapping target audiences is to create personalized messages for everyone. Most probably the target audience is large in numbers and they should have different age groups, gender, region, social status and other varied characteristics.

As they share the same interest in your brand with dissimilar demographics, so you need to do segmentation of the audience and produce content according to their demand and understanding.

In simple terms, you need to understand the content consumption preferences and build your public relations campaigns around the same. Personal messages work like bullets when you trigger the right message to the right person.

80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand who provides personalized experiences (source).

3. A New Approach of Public Relations

As the flow of information has expanded over the time, it has also changed the approach of using PR campaigns for the companies and organizations. The role of PR is not just limited to communicating with the media, but it has spread across the multiple digital channels with dynamic objectives.

Digital marketing is the new booster for the businesses, and smart digital marketers are using public relations to add more power to their marketing campaigns. The modern elements of PR comprise; using an online distribution of brand messages, link building with digital media, and using media visibility to prove authenticity of brand in the mainstream media and public.

The new approach focuses on using subtle advertising and marketing messages packed with content having enough news value. There are thousands of new companies struggling to make a space in the media and grab headlines, but a very few of them could grab them.

Startups and SMBs are also putting an enormous amount of money and efforts into public relations and media visibility. But only the brands and Public Relations agencies which are adopting the modern approach and digital techniques are getting good returns on their whole PR activities.

4. Say What They Need to Hear

‘Agenda Setting Theory’ by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw describes the ability of the news media to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda.

Similarly, strong and well-planned public relations campaigns can build a positive and convincing image of a brand in the public’s eyes. All we need to disseminate a meaningful, powerful and relevant message to a targeted audience.

Using multimedia such as images, infographics and videos boosts up the possibilities of virality of the message in the audience. The visuals give humanized values in the content we are serving to the reader, and it increases the rate of engagement.

Here one thing is important to remember that communication is a long-term process and a powerful public relations campaign nurtures with time and level of messages. We can’t directly force our message on people which they might or might not want to hear, or they are totally unaware of it. Our focus is to inform, aware and educate them, and then convert our message into a brand agenda using the appropriate mediums.

5. Measurement and Tracking

While putting your hands to the plow, be fully aware about the terms like Reach, Engagement, CPC, CTR, Bounce Rate and ROAs.

These are the metrics which reflect the success of your every digital campaign. Briefly, we can understand these terms as:

Reach/ Impressions- Total number of people who have seen your message through any platform

Engagement- Number of people who have interacted with your message in terms of reactions, likes, shares or comments on it

CPC- Cost per click, the amount you are spending for getting a click

CTR- Click through rate, the percentage of people who click on link after seeing it

Bounce rate- Number of people who bounced back from the website right after a few seconds of click or just reading the one article

ROAs- Total return on your advertising budget spend.

When you work with any digital marketing partner for running PR or marketing campaigns, look for these metrics for sure while getting the analytical reports.

6. Social Media Optimization

88% of PR professionals say their businesses or clients regularly engage on Facebook—more than any other social media platform. Twitter came in a close second at 85%. (Source)

Social media is not just a social connectivity platform, but it works as a booster for PR and content marketing professionals. Many successful startups have already proved that we can achieve a lot from the right use of social media. Posting random sales and marketing posts on social media pages do not work anymore. People have millions of choices available online, and you need to engage them with something more creative.

Best part of social media is that it gives us the possibility to get instant feedback and reactions to our efforts. Every social media platform works on an algorithm, and we need to understand it. Testing and analyzing every type of content, scheduling, targeting and interacting regularly with the audience are some ways to understand the working of a platform.

We need to understand the content consumption pattern of our audience and optimize the content accordingly. For example, people on Facebook have different habits and timings as compared to other major platforms like Twitter and Instagram. As a smart professional, our task is to understand these metrics and post content on best timings and schedule.

How to begin your public relations journey?

Modern public relations is a mixture of effective usage of content, technology and branding. As we already said, public relations and corporate communications are shifting towards online media from print media. For a start-up or an emerging business, one needs to set up a presence in online media as soon as possible. Using press releases to reach potential customers is one of the best ways of starting your public relations journey.

Online news distribution platforms are emerging as the new medium of corporate communication and instant media visibility. Here digital press release distribution platforms like NewsVoir can act as the perfect tool for your press release dissemination. NewsVoir’s effective and affordable press release distribution services help you reach multiple media points within a few steps.

To get a special quote for distributing your brand’s first press release with us, contact us here or drop us a mail at hello@newsvoir.com

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