Online Public Relations

Public relations is a method of interaction between an organization and the public by managing the flow of information. This is aimed at persuading the audience, employees, partners, and other share-holders to maintain a certain opinion about a company, its products or leadership in the market.
Public relations includes the following:

• Financial public relations: Providing information to reporters.
• Consumer public relations: Promoting a product or service, instead of advertising.
• Crisis public relations: Countering negative accusations and negative publicity.
• Industry relations: Providing information to different trade associations regarding your product/service
• Government relations: Stimulate policy making by engaging departments in public-sector.

Online public relations generally incorporates social media and social networks. This may also include blogs and micro-blogging. Online public relations activities are implemented towards influencing media, online communities and groups exclusively for the internet.

NEED FOR DEVELOPING ONLINE PUBLIC RELATIONS...

When you have a business set up, there is a need to promote the company or brand to make good profits.

The launch of a product always has to be followed by marketing. If consumers are already purchasing your product and referring it to other, there is no need for developing public relations. But unfortunately, this is not the case with every new organization. To establish a name in the highly competitive market, public relations is very important.

If the business has any events, they should make it easy for the public and media to find it. Online public relation tools include press releases, wire services like PR-Web, an online motoring kit, optimized blogging and appropriate Search Engine Optimized content. A perfect blend of online public relation tactics and offline marketing can be a very effective tool.

HOW IS IT DONE?

• Having a business objective: Understanding of the business objective of your company is the first step. These is a need to convince the public about the challenges faced and the techniques to solve the issues. You also need to keep a check on the competitors and their strategies. A balanced analysis of this would clearly reflect the present market scenario.
• Preparing an appropriate program: Your company should have a clear idea on how to answer queries from various agencies. After a careful analysis of the situation it is necessary to create opportunities to reach out to your audience. You can also design a way by which target audience will contact you directly.
• Training: Train the public. Help the people use social media and social networks. It is always better to teach the consumers to use certain forms of media than to deliver the services. Developing a consultancy service to help the consumers in an effective form of developing public relations.
• Broadcast: Broadcast your company news with press releases. Make several online press releases every month about your organization and distribute them over the public relations network. This would create a positive reputation about your product or service. Broadcasting is generally done to increase the online visibility of your company.
• Optimize press releases: Optimize the articles pertaining to news on your press releases. Map the keywords in accordance with the search engine algorithm. Use keywords in the title, sub-titles and the body. However, give priority to what the readers want. Also create reciprocating links which direct the user to your website. If possible, provide a free guide or report of your product or service.

BENEFITS OF HAVING ONLINE PUBLIC RELATIONS...

• Increased traffic to your company website.
• Building up of brand name, thereby creating awareness.
• Provides a platform to interact with consumers and extract feedback.
• Contributes to Search Engine Optimization by generating links to a website.
• Enhances website authority over the world wide web.