When we talk about PR we rarely contemplate the complexity of the profession. Often PR is about taking a position on an issue, creating claim in a crisis or creating the personality for a brand. Most importantly PR is about spreading your story.

PR companies often complain that their role is misunderstood as clients think it is about getting column inches but yet at the end of the quarter they present their clients with press clippings as the measurement of their success fueling the misconception. In a period of tumbling readership of print publications isn’t it time that we looked at online PR and understood why it often trumps the importance of the traditional column inch?

The 10 Tips and Reasons:

1. Wider audience: Many traditional print publications have a reach limited by geographic boundaries. Their online readership is frequently much greater than their printed circulation therefore an online press release can reach a wider global audience than the printed version. Settling for the fact that your printed story will appear on a website is not sufficient. It rarely translates well to online where readers consume information and behave differently. Your online PR needs to be written for an online audience.

2. Easier to gain prominence: The digital editor of a publication is looking for more than a story and photo. They want multiple photos or video or even competitions or dialogue that encourages interactivity. The digital editor has different needs and is hungry for interactive content. Feed that hunger and be rewarded with more prominent coverage.

3. The story continues: Combine your online PR with online advertising and insist on links back to specifically designed pages on your website where the conversation continues and the attention generated by the article rewards both the reader and you.

Yesterdays offline PR

4. Archived Content: Today’s column inches are tomorrows chip wrappers (did chip shops really wrap their produce in newspapers?). The point is that your online PR with the peer reviewed publication or popular notice boards or blog will be archived and reproduced as a result within search engines. Future searches will reveal your past online PR efforts, especially those that had some level of engagement.

5. Create Google Juice! That’s the term used to describe the power of an inbound link from a peer-reviewed publication. Google (and others) looks at the quality of the publication; a peer-reviewed publication often holds lots of juice, and gives your site Google juice by linking to it helping your search engine performance for that topic. Get enough links from well-respected publications and you will top Google ahead of competitors with random low scoring inbound links.

6. Totally traceable ROI: Links clicks, videos watched, contacts made…real tangible outcomes are measured from online PR. The guesswork on your Return On Investment calculations is made simple.

7. Niche Marketing: Weddings Online gets 4.5 million page impressions per month, that’s as much as most national newspapers and has over 1000 brides signing up in the same period. Each bride spends around 4 hours per week on the site. If you want to reach the wedding market in Ireland, this is the way.

Sugahfix 28,000 21 to 45 year olds interested in fashion in Ireland actively receiving fashion tips per week, while nitechblog.com has 500 top CTO’s in Ireland as frequent readers.

These online publications have massive reach within their niche, something generalist print magazines don’t have. Add in the interactivity they produce with forums and blogs and these publications are the new powerhouse for reaching and talking to your perspective clients.

Get your online PR strategy right and find a low cost, high impact route to your audience. Combine it with online advertising spend and BINGO!

8. Old talents – new platform: Don’t be distracted by the technology focused PR agent that doesn’t have the talent to tell your story well. Poor stories travel equally as bad online as they do offline. Select your PR agency based upon PR credentials not their technology know how. Companies like Ion, DCP, Weber Shandwick and CMPR for example, have both virtues.

9. Multimedia will increase chances of success: If your PR happens to contain video it stands a substantially higher chance of improving engagement, can quickly overcome trust issues and the investment in video can be reused in email marketing and many other online points of contact. The digital editor is more likely to run with the content also as long as it enhances the story and doesn’t look like an ad!

10. Combine and conquer: Any marketing strategy requires multiple channels of activity. If your marketing strategy includes above-the-line elements as well as below-the-line, the combined effect of the activities will be greater than the sum of their parts.

Your customer is increasingly taking their guidance from online research therefore it is imperative than your attention if focused on creating influence in this area. Make online PR a central part of your overall marketing strategy, not a footnote.