Written by Dara Busch, Co-CEO, 5WPR
There is a lot of pressure on the public relations industry because companies expect communication efforts to be effortless and go smoothly with the target audience, and consumers expect companies not to make any mistakes when they're communicating with the public or with media outlets. However, most people view the public relations industry in a negative light because it doesn't really provide them with any valuable insights and the content that is shared through public relations doesn't have a high quality for most audiences. Fortunately, companies can quickly improve their public relations efforts through thought leadership content if it's done well.
Problem
One of the biggest problems in terms of communication that companies have with public relations is the fact that they tend to pitch quite a lot, both multiple journalists, and multiple publications. However, every single publication has different audiences and perspectives, while on the other hand, companies only write a single article and a single pitch for that article and send it to all the outlets they are targeting. If a pitch is accepted, the article then gets tweaked so that it fits the specific outlet's guidelines, and then the result of that is an article that isn't personalized for the readers of that outlet. Another problem that frequently happens with companies is them tweaking original content several times for multiple different outlets and telling every single outlet that is pitched that they are getting an original and an exclusive piece of content, which is not actually true. There's also the fact that a lot of companies don't understand what they're supposed to be doing with their public relations efforts aside from getting positive media coverage, and a lot of businesses don't understand that thought leadership isn't supposed to be a form of advertising for companies.
Solution
One way that companies can solve the problem of public relations through thought leadership is not trying to keyword stuff the content they create that they end up pitching to outlets. Pitched content needs to establish the author of that content as a thought leader in their respective industry, which means the content is supposed to develop trust between the reader, the publication, and the person who wrote it. One of the ways that companies can achieve that is by focusing on the relationship that whoever is creating the content has with the rest of their industry. This relationship should allow companies to avoid creating content that's overly promotional of the business. The main goal of thought leadership should be education and not the promotion of the business. Another way is to not try to optimize the article for social media platforms or search engines. The best thought leadership content is the one that focuses on engaging and interesting subjects from an expert, not promotion or SEO and social media optimization.
