PR and social media - it's all about good content
I went to see a potential new client in the manufacturing sector the other day. They had recently finished their relationship with a PR agency, when I asked them why, they said that it was because they kept talking about strategy and were not actually getting on with the job of creating good content!
What has become increasingly obvious in the past few years is that what clients really want from a PR agency is a resource that can generate consistently good quality content. The most popular sources of content that we are asked for are:
Thought leadership articles
These articles, often in the trade press, position someone in a manufacturing or building products company as the experts in their field. Magazines welcome these articles when they are impartial and issue-led, rather than product-related. The magazine usually uploads them to their website, which means it also provides you with excellent ongoing SEO.
Case studies
Case studies are invaluable as they provide a third party endorsement of your products or services, which we research and write, including quotes from a customer. Trade magazines often run these as in-depth features or as news stories.
Blogs
In the past five years blogs have become one of the most widely sought elements of content. Most of our PR campaigns now require that we write at least a couple of blogs per month. These can be added to the client’s website or to independent third party websites.
So why is good content so highly valued by clients?
This has been largely driven by Google updates that require regular content to be added to a website that contains relevant keywords. We also write blogs for independent news sites and for specific industry/influential bloggers to include on their sites with links back to the client. This is done in order to improve SEO of the client’s site. Clients recognise the impact of good content on their SEO and also how we can repurpose this for use as brochure copy, for e-newsletters and other literature.
How can PR agencies like Dragonfly PR help?
The lines have been blurred between SEO and PR. When SEO companies were in their heyday around five years ago, they used ‘black hat’ techniques, such as setting up dummy sites and including hidden text behind sites to help force a website up the rankings. Now these practices have been blacklisted by Google and have little impact on search.
Google values good content most of all as the hallmark of a great website. This content must be regularly updated and it is also really important to have good quality inbound links to the site.
As having good content is such an important element, clients often find that SEO companies do not have the skills necessary to create quality copy. Also, with many of our clients being in the Construction and Manufacturing sectors and in quite specific areas, it can involve a great deal of time and editorial skill to be able to craft this content effectively. All the content that we generate is independently researched, written by our in-house PR team and authoritative to a topic that impacts the client’s business or its customers.
We do not simply copy and paste content across multiple websites, or we could be doing harm to a client’s website through duplicate content. Instead, we redraft any content that we want to share with other websites, online magazines or bloggers and make each specific to that outlet.
What is certain with generating good content is that it can be time consuming and our clients recognise that to enable us to create quality copy we need to gain an in-depth understanding of their products and services. This usually starts when we embark on a PR campaign with a client and invest time into undertaking product training or interviewing product or technical managers, when required. We pride ourselves on getting up to speed really quickly and our aim is always to start generating thought leadership articles, blogs or case studies within a short period of time, where the client has to make minimal amends.
For a review of your content requirements call us!
So if you think your business is lacking good content – whether it be for your website, for the trade press, for blog or online use, talk to our PR team about how we can create well written, well optimised content that will have a significant impact on traffic levels to your website.
Call the Dragonfly PR team on 01709 300130 or email hello@dragonflypr.co.uk.