Content marketing and public relations are similar beasts and don’t let the marketing cognoscenti tell you any different.
There are those who continue to believe PR is headed the way of the dodo, with the emergence of social media. It hasn’t – and it won’t. What has probably changed is the way savvy companies use PR in tandem with social media to reach more eyeballs.
Why combine PR with content marketing?
Quality PR and content marketing share common ground. Both try to generate content by tracking the latest developments and trends across the industries wherein they operate.
The insights from the PR team can help the content marketers generate material in keeping with the latest financial market trends. On the flipside, the content marketers can help your PR team understand the information your clients want to read.
Build trust through PR
Any PR professional understands that building a mutually beneficial relationship with bloggers, journalists, and editors is a primary objective of their craft. By combining PR and content marketing, a financial planning firm can distribute content such as blogs, videos, and podcasts to influencers, time-poor journalists and news reporters on a regular basis. When you share well-crafted content with the media, they are more likely to connect and use your content. Better still, they can start to trust you as a genuine source of relevant financial planning information.
Improve PR search engine results
It’s probably fair to say that some PR professionals are still fine-tuning the best way to use press releases to boost the search-engine optimisation efforts of their marketing teams.
Content marketers can help the PR team by improving the SEO value of their material. This can be done by supplying keywords, inbound links, meta-tags and so on, which can be added to media releases to help increase traffic to your website. Therefore, a collaboration between content marketing and public relations can supercharge the results of your overall marketing strategy.
Blending PR and content marketing
To get PR and content marketing singing off the same hymn sheet, it’s essential these communications specialists get together regularly to chat.
For starters, both teams must be mindful of your firm’s marketing strategy and key messages. Then they should regularly collaborate on campaigns to ensure they are employing the same themes in the content they’re producing.
That said, with different teams collaborating on several marketing campaigns, it’s easy to lose track of the process – and this is where regular meetings are a must. They are probably the best way to keep the PR and content marketers moving in the same direction.
To my way of thinking, mixing content marketing with public relations is a critical way to ensure your content cuts through the congested digital space. The capacity of this partnership can provide your financial planning firm with a marketing point of difference if you find a way for your public relations activities and content marketing to work in harmony.
