There is no denying that we are in the midst of constantly evolving social trends, new marketing tactics and various expectations from different generations of consumers. The lines between PR and marketing have never been more blurred, and now is the time to prepare your teams for success. An e-book I read recently really got me thinking: Upskilling is going to be crucial to stand a chance in the new digital PR arena.
As the founder of a software company that helps businesses pitch journalists to get press coverage without a PR firm, I’ve found — through our data — that any successful PR outreach effort needs to have specific skills and expertise behind it.
Rather than fighting against the inevitable convergence of these two departments, you should prepare your team members. Below are some thoughts on skills your PR team should be focusing on to ensure fluid teamwork and success.
Digital Marketing Skills
1. SEO
In short, search engine optimization (SEO) helps to understand how people search the web, where they do it, when they do it and, most importantly, how many times a specific keyword is searched.
Understanding SEO ensures that future PR content and campaigns created for your tech company don’t have to be based on internal releases only. In fact, spending time understanding specific keywords and their intent can help your team create dedicated PR campaigns.
Just to give you an example, a typical PR goal for you might be to rank No. 1 on Google for the keyword “best CRM for photographers.” You would leverage SEO by researching the articles that currently rank on Google for this keyword and write something much better on the topic for your own blog. You could then do PR outreach to get other publications to link back to that main article on your blog. Eventually, your rankings would improve and hopefully rank No. 1 for your keyword.
These focused campaigns can not only provide awareness with a highly engaged audience (because they are specifically searching for those keywords), but it can also help your bottom line. People find your focused content, click it, and if you have done enough to convince them, they will make a conversion.
2. Keyword Research
Keyword research is not just about finding high-volume search terms, ranking and reaping the rewards. It’s about understanding the intent of the searcher. Behind every keyword, phrase and sentence searched, there is intent. This could be purely research-based or it could be a middle-of-funnel lurker checking for alternatives. These people are in the market and it’s up to your team to supply the right materials at the right time. Try to put yourself in your searcher’s shoes. What are they truly looking for and what is their intent when typing in those search queries into Google?
3. Trends/Analytics
Data is core to the success of understanding your customer base and what makes them tick. Every decision should be made based on data understanding and reasoning. Unfortunately, with the vast amounts of data being generated and plenty of platforms to make it understandable, it can become overwhelming.
Starting with the most popular tool for digital marketing, Google Analytics can provide a lot of information about your website and its visitors. This should be a key tool for examining the results of a PR campaign.
For example, say you launched a social media campaign both organically and via paid promotion. You’d now have two sources of consumer data — social media and Google Analytics. When the results are combined, you can paint a picture of user flow, landing pages, exit pages and so much more.
Creative And Design Skills
Even though PR takes a certain kind of creativity to find angles and create compelling headlines, there needs to be far more emphasis on improving visual creative skills.
4. Video
Video is important to any brand these days. Having team members who can whip together a short video — for social media purposes, as an example — can be the difference between huge engagement or tepid interest.
For example, a friend of mine, who is also a business owner, said his team simply records short 1-2 minute videos for each journalist and sends that as a PR pitch. The pitch is literally just a “hello,” a sentence or two, and a link to the video. Their response rate has tripled as a result.
To make things easier, there are plenty of subscription platforms that provide tools to create videos in seconds.
5. Images
Basic Photoshop or Illustrator skills just helps people get on with their work. When you lack the fundamental skills to complete a task, you are inevitably stuck and frustrated. Stock images provide a great resource for the vast majority, but having customized images for a new blog post helps your brand stick out and be unique.
Soft Skills
Since departments are likely to combine and team members will join in daily duties, soft skills need to be learned.
6. Teamwork
This isn’t anything new. Your PR team is used to working with other teams. Most likely, the collaboration aspect has been focused on sharing updates and gathering intelligence for a campaign.
As more skills are picked up by the PR team, there will need to be a focus on working with the marketing team for effective data understanding, creatives and campaigns.
7. Problem Solving
Data can be a huge asset to anyone, but without a clear understanding of the data, you cannot take the steps needed to solve problems. Observing the vanity metrics such as Facebook likes or number of tweets is not enough either. With new metrics and tools being introduced to get even deeper into understanding your audience, it’s vital that everyone knows how to read data and predict and solve issues.
Closing Thoughts
This is one of those situations where the immediate effects are rarely felt. Learning and applying new skills takes time, but there will be a day when the effects are seen. Upskilling needs to start now — for your business and your team.