Some e-marketers focus on increasing customer engagement using social media through none-optimized PR. In other words, they don’t use PR as a link building or traffic generation mechanism. Others go for the other extreme; they focus all their attention on SEO, overlooking the amazing potential that PR has to offer. Here is why I believe that applying SEO for PR optimization is the best social media strategy that will maximize your online visibility and boost your social networking success.
Reason 1: Fish where the fish are
We all know that consumers heavily rely on search engines to find information but here is the surprise: recent studies have revealed that 64% of journalists use top search engines, namely Google and Yahoo, to dig for “hot” news. Thus, it’s definitely a smart move for you to optimize your PR using some SEO common practices such as keywords-rich ( but not excessively rich ) content and link building. Getting news coverage will substantially help you in building your social proof , boosting your corporate identity and your brand recognition. The good news is: you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on PR as you can easily become your own PR samurai.
Reason 2: Take full advantage of the benefits that only PR has to offer
PR audiences far exceed those of other marketing mediums. Potential investors, partners, customers, and prospects are greatly influenced by news content. Taking the time to optimize your PR means boosting your brand awareness to a large spectrum of audience. It is not an easy or straightforward mission, but it is well worth the effort.
Reason 3: Maximize your exposure through unsolicited media recognition
News sites, online publications, and blogs have one thing in common: they are hungry for quality content. So, if you use SEO for PR optimization, you will enjoy a wide range of unsolicited exposure. But if you excluded the SEO factor from your overall social media strategy, you will be missing out on great opportunities.
Reason 4: Optimized SEO-based PR translates into effective e-marketing
News content stories are often republished and some are syndicated, helping you reach or exceed your e-marketing objectives through link building that will eventually drive quality traffic to your site.
Reason 5: Protect your brand reputation
If none of the above reasons was convincing enough for you to leverage SEO for PR, reason 5 will definitely do the trick. Nothing protects a brand reputation more than having extensive PR coverage that it designed to highlight your key brand assets. This way, online searchers will be able to find the right information about your business rather than getting unwanted attention from other parties.
Do you optimize your brand’s PR? What helped you succeed?
