Public Relations Archives - Best in Business

5 Tips to Boost Your Company’s Audience Engagement

Audience engagement isn’t always as easy as posting the latest meme to your social page. To truly generate the results you’re looking for, you’ll need to approach your engagement strategy with a plan.

For example, simply posting a video to your Facebook page could result in 135% greater reach than a text or image post?

Here are 5 tips for improving audience engagement that you can use to fuel your strategy.

1. Show Off your personality to up audience engagement

Audiences don’t care for faceless brands anymore. Instead, they prefer companies who come across as warm, friendly, and witty.

Brand personality humanizes a company and makes them easier to identify and connect with.

If you haven’t already come up with a branding strategy, now is the perfect time to do so. Pick a few traits that you think represent your brand, then think about ways in which you can express those via your company’s voice.

Your team should serve as brand ambassadors who keep that voice consistent across any and all channels.

2. Invest in Content

The saying is true, “content is king.” Content marketing is the most effective way to show off your brand’s personality, generate traffic, and get your audience engaged and talking about your business.

However, ‘content’ is a vague term, so we don’t blame you if you’re not sure where to begin.

It all depends on where you’re posting.

Images and video tend to generate the most buzz on social media, while blog posts on your website are a fantastic way to establish trust, brand authority, and improve your SEO.

3. Get Your Audience Involved

All too often, marketing is mistaken for a passive endeavor. Don’t fall into this old pitfall — modern marketing is anything but passive.

Some of the hottest brands get clicks by directly involving their audience. Research even shows that when you get your audience involved, they’re more likely to take an interest in your product or service.

Your call to action is the best way to encourage involvement. End each post by encouraging a specific action. The most common CTA involves getting in touch with your business.

Don’t feel limited, though. Ask for audience involvement by requesting feedback, asking your audience to submit content, encouraging comments, or anything else that requires them to take action.

4. Reply to Comments

Generating comments on your content can be a challenge. It’s even tougher if your audience feels as though you don’t care about what they’re saying.

As often as you can, reply to comments, whether they’re positive or negative. Doing so lets your audience know you’re listening.

5. Post at the Right Time

You have great content and you’re excited for the world to see it. Now, all that’s left to do is load it into your content management system and hit publish, right?

That’s an option. But if you’re publishing at an off-hour, you won’t receive the engagement you’re hoping for.

Instead, check your analytics before posting. What times generate the most engagement? Follow your data and you can’t go wrong.

If you don’t have any data yet, a good rule of thumb is to post during business hours. Arrange for posts to go live around mid-morning and just after lunch, as audiences tend to be the most alert and productive during these periods.

Boost Your Company’s Audience Engagement With These Tips

Before we go, we should note that audience engagement involves a fair bit of trial and error. Not everything will work on the first try. It’s worth keeping a content calendar and trying out different types of content on a consistent basis to see which types of content yield the most audience engagement.

That’s okay!

Stay patient and learn from your data. You’ll boost your audience engagement in no time!

Want to get eyes on your business? Contact us today to find out how we can help!

Simple Do’s and Don’ts When Applying For Business PR Awards

Winning an award for your company feels great. But that’s not the only benefit!
One study found that companies who received an award saw a 37% sales increase afterword.

PR awards may be a great way to build trust and credibility for your company, but how do you secure an award in the first place?

We’ve got some tips that you should be sure to follow below, so keep reading!

Do: Put in Your Application as Soon as Possible

You can’t guarantee that your application will make it to the top of the stack. But by submitting your application as soon as entries open, you’ll stand a better chance of sticking out in judges’ minds.

Start your application a few days before the content calls for entries. That way, you’ll be sure yours is one of the first that judges see.

Don’t: Forget to Include Supplementary Materials

The perfect PR award application contains a healthy balance of text and images.

It’s one thing to tell judges that you had a killer year in terms of customer satisfaction or did some great humanitarian works as a team. But letting them see it for themselves cements the details and makes them more real.

Photos, charts, videos — send anything and everything you have that’s relevant to your entry.

Do: Apply To Multiple Programs

Don’t feel as though you’re limited to applying for one award. You miss 100% of the shots you never take, after all.

Though it may seem obvious, applying to multiple programs substantially increases your chances of winning an award.

So don’t be shy, go ahead and apply.

Don’t: Submit in Every Category

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean you should go crazy and apply for all categories. Only select the ones that directly apply to your company.

A blanket application of all categories will only frustrate the judges and make them feel as though you don’t value their time.

Do: Keep Your Application Brief

The shorter your application, the better. While you could likely brag about your company’s hard work for hours on end, put yourself in the judges’ shoes. They have hundreds — sometimes thousands — of applications to get through.

Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Be as direct and descriptive as you can. Let your supplementary materials do the rest.

Don’t: Forget to Proofread

We can’t stress this enough, have someone look over the application before you submit it. A silly typo might not seem like a big deal, but it can discredit you in the eyes of the judges.

Get a second, third, and even fourth set of eyes to check it out. The more input you can get from your team, the better.

Show Them What You’re Made Of: How to Win PR Awards

If your company is looking to secure some PR awards this year, make sure to follow these tips. While we can’t guarantee you’ll win, follow these tips and you’ll stand a much better chance of impressing the judges.

Want to recommend your company for an award? Get in touch and find out how!

PR Strategies: Attracting Media Publicity for Your Small Business

Get the Coverage Your Company Deserves: How to Get Media Attention.

The business world is more competitive than ever. Consumers have more choices and more access to information than ever before.

Public relations, or earned media, builds trust with your customers and potential customers. The more they trust your brand, the more likely they will be to buy from you. It also generates brand awareness which can set your business apart from your competition.

What’s the best way to generate earned media? Find out how to get media attention with these tried and true PR strategies.

1. Connect with Journalists in Your Industry

Public relations is built on relationships. You have to develop relationships with writers and journalists covering your local area and in your industry.

For example, if you’re in Central Georgia, you can pick up the Macon Telegraph and find out who covers the business beat in the area.

Being active on social media channels like Twitter and LinkedIn are also good ways to connect with journalists.

2. Give Them a Reason to Write About You

It’s not enough to reach out to a journalist and tell them about your business. You have to give them a reason to write about you.

A couple of ways to do that is to host an event or earn a small business award. You could also sponsor an event with another local company which could generate media attention.

3. Make Your Messaging Consistent

In order to gain the full impact of getting media attention, you need to make sure that your messaging is consistent with your brand.

You want to think about what the public should feel about your business, whether it’s security, happiness, or any other emotion. Make sure that that is reflected in the story and the messaging you are sending out to various media channels.

The messaging also has to be consistent. Have you ever seen a politician deliver the same speech and the same message over and over? That’s what being on message looks like.

With earned media, you don’t have full control over the message, but you do control how you present your business. Make sure that the message itself is consistent and that it is also consistent with your brand image.

4. Be Active in Looking for Opportunities

News happens every single day. Journalists are usually looking for sources to report the news. You can help fill in those gaps by positioning yourself as an expert in your field.

As you develop relationships with writers and journalists, you’ll position yourself as the go-to source for an opinion or insight to breaking news.

5. Have Patience

If you really want to know how to get media attention, you’ll need a bit of patience. It takes time to reach out and develop relationships with writers and journalists. They can get bombarded with requests from ‘experts’ and you have to show that you’re the real thing.

When you make a commitment to getting media attention for your business and take consistent action, you’ll eventually be rewarded.

How to Get Media Attention the Right Way

A clip in a newspaper or industry magazine could make a big difference in your brand and your business. When you learn how to get media attention, you´ll quickly learn that it takes a lot of work but has a big payoff.

You have to build connections with journalists and give them a great story to tell. The more you can do that, the more coverage you’ll get over time.

Are you ready to give people a reason to write about you? Find out how a Best in Business Award can elevate your business and generate press coverage.

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