Coach: Trish Varker-Miles
Key Points
- PR involves spreading information between an organisation or an individual to the wider public; managing your reputation and brand awareness
- Target your audiences with relevant content at relevant times; keep across interests and observe digital influencers for ideas
Video Notes/Transcript
Thanks for having me today. I’m really looking forward to speaking to you about PR and how you can use it to your advantage. It really ties in quite well with what was just discussed about social media.
Essentially, PR is the spreading of information between an organisation or an individual to the wider public. The PR agent is really responsible for managing your reputation and your brand awareness.
Sometimes it is quite confused with advertising, but it is difficult, because the lines are really blurry now.
PR agencies do a lot with what digital agencies do. For example, we do manage people’s social media. We do also create content. We do also engage with digital influencers and pay them to promote our client.
(PR) is about consistency and constantly putting the same message out, over and over again until you start establishing your name and reputation in the media. Trish Varker-Miles
The lines are really blurry between digital agencies, PR agencies and advertising agencies. I still do have, from time to time, clients who will say that they don’t feel that their PR was successful unless they’re on TV or unless they’re seen in print. But in many cases you can’t do this, because blogs are getting a larger reach in some cases, than print media.
If you do get an article online, even if it’s in the niche title. It still can be fantastic for you, it can really get you the coverage that you want. That leads into also thinking about who your audience is, who you want to target.
For example, if you’re targeting a millennial audience, being on the six o’clock news may not necessarily be the right avenue for you.
One of the things to keep in mind is, there was a time when we would write a press release and we’d issue it to, say, 100 media. It would be the same press release that would go to 100 media. This is about five to ten years ago. We would take that box and we would get some press and that would be a successful exercise. Now this is no longer effective.
The reason for this is media like exclusives. The Sydney Morning Herald for example is not going to want to see the same article in the Australian.
Obviously media will want to run a story first, so if you’re already releasing the news through your social media channels, they ideally won’t want to see that. Don’t pitch a story to them that they’ve already covered two weeks ago and just see what they’re interested in. It’s just constantly keeping across their interests, so you can always speak to them about an interesting story that you know that they’ll run.
Look at the house or the development that you’re promoting, and look at what the different, unique angles are in that story, for that property. I’ve used a Sydney example, because we’re in Sydney today, but say, for example, you have a luxury home in Mosman for sale.
Some of the things that may be relevant, that you could look at is does it have sustainable design features? Is there an eco angle? Can we look at pitching the unique story about that listing to eco related writers and titles? Or is it a spectacular design? Can we interview the architect for the design media and pitch it as a design story?
One other thing to really remember, and property is actually really good at this, is the quality of your supporting visuals. Sometimes it’s actually the pitcher that gets you the coverage.
Traditionally, we only had print, TV, radio and then we had bloggers. But now we’ve got digital influencers that we can harness their power and also get them to not only amplify our content, but also create it for us as well.
What I would recommend you do is get on Instagram and have a look at who are the digital influencers in your space. In interiors [and] property, for example, and just follow and observe them. See what brands they’re working with, see what they’re promoting and how you can maybe use some of these people down the track.
Also, I think what’s really important when promoting property is look at what’s trending. When I said that, I mean, not just what’s trending locally, but what’s trending globally. Is energy efficiency a big issue at the moment? How is this property potentially energy efficient? Can we tap into what media are talking about at that time?
Rooftop gardens are a thing. I know I’ve promoted a lot of edible, having edible gardens of vegetable patches and cooking at home kind of thing. That works very well and a lot of the articles I’ve done on rooftop gardens have given international comparisons in New York.
I think it’s really important to realise that profiles do take time to develop. There’s no overnight fame, it’s like any good career. It takes time. Even a really great PR agent can’t make you an overnight success.
It just is about consistency and constantly putting the same message out, over and over again until you start establishing your name and reputation in the media.
