PR is digital marketing’s best friend. PR attracts new audiences while marketing efforts close deals. If you implement both, your brand will be unstoppable.

With PR, you need to first identify who your target audience is and leverage outlets to create a positive brand image.

Wishing for more exposure for your brand? Ready to tell your story through strong relationships? Then modern-day PR is what you need.

Bridging creativity and strategy in the age of digital, welcome to modern-day PR.

What Does Modern-Day PR Look Like?

PR is all about the right relationships. And today, that involves relationships with your current customers, with influencers, with the media, etc.

Modern-day PR is primarily digital. So you need to make it easy for your target audience to find information about your brand online. Earning press for your products or services offers the third-party endorsement consumers crave.

PR has evolved and your brand needs to evolve with it.

15 PR Strategies That are Easy to Implement

Ready to pair your digital marketing with some solid PR strategies? I’ve got quite the list for you of PR strategies that you can implement ASAP.

And these PR efforts will thrive online and offline. Someone may learn about your brand online and then tell their best friend all about it over martinis.

• Start local: Your strongest assets may be with your localized outlets. Having a strong local foundation will set you up as a credible partner with national outlets.
• Join HARO: HARO is a website that journalists go to for sources for their stories. Brands like yours can sign up for free and receive emails 3 times per day with queries. Find the ones that align with your brand and offer your insights. Sign up for HARO here, it’s super simple.
• Collaborate with like-minded brands: Increase the size of your audience by capitalizing on another brand’s audience. Partner with like-minded brands and expose each other’s audiences to your efforts. Obviously, you won’t choose a competing brand. An example of this would be a margarita brand partnering with a salsa brand and promoting each other on social or tackling an influencer marketing campaign and splitting the cost.
• Join communities: A huge component of PR is networking. Communities, both online and offline provide great networking opportunities. Join strategic communities on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Join communities in your town. Look into your chamber of commerce.
• Secure a database: If you really want to hit PR hard, you should get a database of contacts. Platforms like Cision and Muck Rack are the most popular for this and offer contacts for the press, celebrities, decision-makers, media, influencers, and more.
• Identify your story: The heartbeat of successful PR is storytelling. Before reaching out to contacts and your community, identify your brand’s story. Figure out what will help your target audience connect with your brand on an emotional level.
• Seed your PR partners: Another thing to identify before doing PR outreach is what exactly are you going to give your partners. A press release? An interview? A media kit? A quote? A video? All of the above?
• Lead with thought leadership: Instead of being overly promotional, aim to be a trusted resource. This attracts audiences and fosters trust in your brand. And trust turns into happy consumers. Learn everything you need to know about becoming a thought leader here.
• Be a guest: There are many ways for you to get your brand’s story out. One of those ways is to be a guest on a podcast, a presenter at a webinar, a guest post on a blog, etc. Leverage audiences that are fit and already curated.
• Partner with influencers: Since modern-day PR is no longer just about traditional media outlets, you need to find authentic people with large audiences who can amplify your brand. Influencers have already engaged audiences and are a trusted sources to their audience making their recommendations super impactful. Read more about influencer partnerships here.
• Be strategic with press releases: Many brands still report success with press releases. However, you can’t just publish them and hope for the best anymore. You need to distribute them on social media, equip influencers with them, link to them in your pitch to journalists, etc.
• Get your employees on board: To really drive home your brand’s authenticity, involve your employees in your PR efforts. Get multiple voices out there to see who and what is resonating with your audience.
• Leverage video content: Consumers read less and report wanting to learn about brands through video. The good news is that consumers also want authenticity and don’t expect an overly polished video so you can record an actionable one simply with your phone. Read more about video content here.
• Capitalize on social media: Look at your social presence as a way to create engagement with your target audience. Be authentic, offer great advice, and don’t overly promote your brand as that turns consumers off. And be sure to implement social listening so that you know what people are saying about your brand on social media.
• Don’t go with a pricey PR firm: PR firms are often expensive and antiquated. As you can see with the strategies in this article, you and your brand are more than capable of running your PR strategy in-house. If you really don’t have time, I recommend hiring a freelancer on UpWork.

Final Thoughts: How to Get Started With PR Today

PR gets overlooked by a lot of brands and is sometimes associated with antiquated strategies. However, it establishes a connection with your audience and your brand.

To succeed in PR for your company, be sure to implement at least a few of the strategies that I implemented in this article.

Remember, PR works in tandem with marketing, it creates brand awareness and then it’s a marketer's job to convert audiences into customers. 

At the end of the day, PR should be fun. Enjoy combining creativity with strategy to positively impact your brand image.

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Do you implement PR at your company? I would love to read about the insights you have discovered in the comments below!

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