Stacey Acevero is the social media community manager at Vocus and PRWeb.
Marketing today looks very little like it did even the last four to five years. The explosion of the social and niche destinations continues to change the marketing landscape for small and large businesses alike.
If you are newer to the world of digital marketing, your campaigns may be springing a leak or two.
Take a look at the five common digital PR problems below and how to fix them.
You’re the victim of high bounce rates: Let’s say you have created an integrated campaign focused on topically relevant keywords to generate traffic to your landing pages. However, when you check your site analytics, you see a high number of visitors clicking to you once, and then leaving.
The fix: Be sure your content is consistent between all channels. If your news releases are saying focused on one message and visitors can’t find a logical link to the content you have sent them to, they are unlikely to stay around. It’s important that your call to action (CTA) be consistent with the content as well. If your information is education-based then the CTA should be softer, such as “download a whitepaper” or “sign up for a webinar.” Someone searching for, and finding your content, via broader phrases isn’t likely ready to speak to a salesperson or request a demo.
You’re scattered amongst segregated audiences: You’re pushing your message everywhere you can think of that potential customers might be hanging out. But if you aren’t putting thought into how the campaigns complement one other, you’ll have a random group of followers rather than a community of groupies.
One way companies’ get an irrelevant audience fast is by offering too many giveaways for increases in ‘likes’. Be careful of growing metrics too quickly by attracting people who aren’t your core audience and won’t stay around after the contest is over.
The fix: Don’t just think of how to attract an audience, employ ways to help the audience grow itself – think “shares”, “likes”, retweets, and blog forums.
One of the most successful ways to grow a relevant audience is by engaging with them. Ask a topically-relevant question each day to start conversations. Once they are used to connecting with you, and coming back for more, the likelihood that they see your content – and share it – will increase.
Your blog has the blahs: According to recent info from InsideView.com, the average social media activity for the Fortune 100 companies includes seven blog posts per month. If you aren’t putting similar amounts of effort into your blog, chances are your audience will go to where the content is frequent and valuable.
The fix: Create a blog content calendar to help provide structure and keep the team on-task. Create a stream of creativity-inducing channels with RSS feeds from thought leaders and news sources in your industry. Weekly news round ups and adding your thoughts to new research is a great way to stay relevant and not get bogged down in trying to concept ideas.
You’re missing small opportunities: You may have a grand presence on Facebook and Twitter but have you researched niche sites?
The fix: Research where else your audience might be seeking content, chatting or sharing. For example, threadless.com is a community-based site for T-shirt lovers where the community designs the shirts which are produced and sold.
Your brand is hidden in the landscape: You’ve distributed news releases, even added images and video. You’ve tweeted new announcements and posted to Facebook, but you’re still lost in the crowd.
The fix: Find something about your brand that stands out and then promote it! The digital marketplace is sprinkled with standouts and crowded with posers. In any competitive landscape, unique is not only attractive it’s essential.
Re-visit your campaigns to see how messages can be tweaked or simplified to truly let your differentiators shine.
The quote “within the problem lies the solution” applies to digital PR challenges perfectly. Luckily, the net offers enough solutions to cover any issues you’ve encountered and even more for the ones you (hopefully) won’t.
Stacey Acevero is the social media community manager at Vocus and PRWeb. Part of the PR team and an early adopter of social media, she blogs frequently about public relations, social media, marketing, and search engine optimization at BloggingPRWeb.