Public Relations: Essential service during the pandemic
Keep it digital: One of the advantages of COVID-19 was the exponential acceleration in digital adoption around the world. Consumers are now leaning more on digital platforms to get informed, make purchase decisions or just to keep up with close family and friends. Companies and businesses across the globe are now changing how they do businesses by embracing technology as a critical component.
Adopting a digital-first approach during the pandemic for your brand’s public relations is critical to ensuring that your brand survives and thrives. Digital PR is a powerful strategy used to increase awareness of your brand using online methods. It relies on Internet-based strategies such as search engine optimization, content marketing, influencer outreach and social media. In combination with traditional PR, which involves networking with journalists in order to get featured in print publications, digital PR ensures your brand’s messages reach a much broader audience.
Networking with Journalists: The media industry across the globe has been hit severely by the pandemic. Some media organizations unfortunately have permanently closed down. Print media have cut down pages and sales dwindled because advertising spends from brands declined and the public was opting for more online platforms to consume the news. Sadly, some media also had to lay off staff to navigate through the pandemic. Still, the role of the media industry cannot be overestimated in the fight against the spread of the virus and in keeping people informed about what to do to stay safe.
Public relations will always be a relationship business and networking with journalists is critical, even during the pandemic. The pandemic has reduced face-to-face meet-ups with journalists. Physical events have been limited or totally stopped by some brands during the pandemic and this has made the usual media networking rendezvous irrelevant.
Notwithstanding, this is still the best period to show genuine interest in journalists. Brands will need to connect with journalists on virtual meet-ups, social media or just by simply giving them a call to find out how they are doing. This is also the time to show the human touch, brand need to show empathy towards the media. Setting up a social responsibility platform to support the media will go a long way in building the right relationships with journalists that can be sustained.
The pandemic has definitely made us all start thinking differently. With public relations, the key to surviving through the crisis is flexibility and a willingness to adapt to new ways of working. Media channels are fewer and journalists are more interested in messages that relate to the pandemic; whether it is about working remotely, update on health-related news, news about the economy and new ways of working for businesses, brands need to be part of the ongoing conversation.
Public relations work to strategically place brands positively into news stories during the pandemic. Earned media is the most reliable and the most cost-effective. The pandemic has made the need for information spike and the media is saddled with the responsibility of informing with the right stories that inspire, inform or amuse. PR is a service that identifies a captivating idea for a brand, crafts the messages and finds the strategic partners to tell the story with. This is essential for brands seeking to navigate successfully through the pandemic.
Iyamu is a Lagos based public relations (PR) expert and chief executive officer (CEO), IVI PR.
