Public relations units within corporations, not-for-profit organizations, and government institutions have embraced the Internet to communicate important information and to build relationships with key publics. Online public relations employs Web sites and other Internet technologies, such as e-mail discussion groups and chats, file transfers, and remote kiosk terminals. Factors that shape online organizational-public relationship building relate to the organization, the system being used, and the user. The process of relationship building includes awareness and trial, cognitive learning, interactivity with technology and others, and impression formation. Outcomes of relationship building can be measured in terms of knowledge, attitudes toward the organization, communication activities, and the adoption of routinized behaviours that benefit the organization (and user). In addition to promotion and relationship building, online relations is particularly important to organizations when managing crises and issues. Public relations managers confront numerous concerns in managing online relations. These include content control, branding, assurance of message quality, usability, systems integration, security, legal and regulatory compliance, and assessment and measurement. Implications for organizational-public relationships in society also are discussed.
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PR Definition:
PR is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.
PR is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.
Advantages PR:
- The most economical way by far to reach mass audiences
- Stimulates awareness of and demand for your company products or services
- Develops a stronger, more controlled image for your firm
- Creates the perception that the company is active, “on the move”
- Has seven times the credibility of advertising, studies show
- Provides an advantage over competitors who do not use ‘P.R.’ effectively
Disadvantages PR:
- Hard to Measure Success
- Need a Publicist
- Appropriate Media
- Inaccurate Message or Storytelling
Best practice in Online Public Relations (OPR):
Public relations not only tells an organisation’s story to its publics, it also helps to shape the organisation and the way it works. Through research, feedback communication and evaluation, the practitioner needs to find out the concerns and expectations of a company’s publics and explain them to its management.
- Research
- Relationships
- Measurement
- Writing
Why Social Media Participation is Critical for Online Public Relations
- The viral nature of Social Media have the potential to reach a much larger audience
Media & Blogger Relations: Communicating With the Media and Generating Coverage
- Tactic 1: Connect & Develop Relationships with Influencers in Social Media
- Tactic 2: Pitching
- Tactic 3: Using Creative Content as an Outreach Tool
News Release Best Practices
- Be direct and concise.
- Have something worth saying.
- Write using a newsworthy angle.
- Conduct keyword research to discover your best keywords.
- Use a descriptive headline, and limit it to 80 characters or fewer.
- Limit your release to 300-500 words.
- Eliminate jargon, clichés, and over-used, hype-filled words
- Don’t use formatting bullets.
- Include your logo.
- Don’t embed multimedia elements.
- Put the most important link at the beginning.
- Don’t repeat links or anchor text.
- Don’t litter your release with links.
- Link to internal pages, too.
- When possible, make anchor text the same as your page title.
Use Online Partnerships and Affiliation to improve your Online Public Relations:
The idea is for business A to have other businesses sell their products for them. Affiliate marketing is more akin to the distribution of the ‘parent’ organisation, arguably a form of franchising. AM is an online referral programme with partners in the affiliate agreeing to referral fee that is paid when a referred customer completes a transaction.
Interactive display advertising:
Display advertising is graphical advertising on the World Wide Web that appears next to content on web pages, IM applications, email, etc.
These ads, often referred to as banners, come in standardized ad sizes, and can include text, logos, pictures, or more recently, rich media.
Rich media, synonymous for interactive multimedia, is enhanced media that utilizes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content for active participation from the recipient of the ad.
Mobile commerce:
Mobile Commerce, or m-Commerce, is about the explosion of applications and services that are becoming accessible from Internet-enabled mobile devices. It involves new technologies, services and business models. It is quite different from traditional e-Commerce. Mobile phones impose very different constraints than desktop computers. But they also open the door to a slew of new applications and services. They follow you wherever you go, making it possible to look for a nearby restaurant, stay in touch with colleagues, or pay for items at a store.
Viral marketing:
VM is a network-enhanced word of mouth, a kind of marketing activity in which a company recruits customers to be sales agents and spread the word about his product.
Using offline techniques to support Online Public Relations:
- Newspaper Ad and PR
- Company brochure and catalogue
- Printed material
- Etc…
Learn more:
Our Internet Marketing Course with its hands on approach is designed to not only give the learners an in-depth understanding of internet marketing but also it will equips them the skills necessary to deliver the job. The course will address the use of internet media to deliver all the marketing functions (promotion, advertising, interactive communications, market research and developing customer relationships).
