Connecting the dots in 2022

When it comes to PR, planning and preparation are key to success. This unfortunately means, if you're only now thinking about your 2022 strategy, then you're already playing catch up. Merry Christmas!

Connecting the dots in 2022

When it comes to PR, planning and preparation are key to success. This unfortunately means, if you’re only now thinking about your 2022 strategy, then you’re already playing catch up. Merry Christmas!

All is not lost. It’s likely that you have missed out on pre-planned features and diarised themes for Q1 in your target media, but there’s still plenty of action you can take to secure fantastic coverage for your brand. And, if you know the right people (cough, cough), you could still leverage some relationships to sneak into one or two of those articles too. 

All the usual stuff still applies. Anyone who knows Team Rev will probably be sick of hearing this, but humour us, it’s the season of goodwill after all. Adding value, educating, and helping your target audience solve problems is by far the best way to get your name seen and heard. Sure, we all need entertaining still, but the genuinely useful stuff has a longer shelf-life and is much more conducive to being saved, shared, and referenced. Thereby increasing its value exponentially.  

Not to mention the fact that content designed and created in this way will, by its very nature, contribute to your ‘expert’ status. The more you go out to the media with stories and advice that supports their readers or listeners, the more likely they are to come to you when they need a comment from a trusted, reliable, industry leader. And everything you create has the potential to be repurposed and reused to continually bolster your own platforms. This circular system ensures a consistency of messaging too. 

You could be forgiven for thinking that it’s a bit of a ‘chicken or egg’ scenario. It’s not. If you use the remainder of 2021 and even the beginning of 2022 for anything, let it be content creation! Build up a library of content that tells the story of your brand, from different perspectives and for the benefit of different audiences… your target ones, obviously, not just random subgroups. 

Ideally, your activity should be dual stream. And these things should be happening simultaneously every month. The beauty of this approach means that you can always actively amplify your story and your message through your own channels using the content you create. At the same time, you should be reaching out to the media, and responding to them, to secure commentary, inclusions and coverage that cements your position as a credible, trustworthy brand. 

Whether you have a plan in place or you’re just getting started, the single most important thing to take into 2022 is this: connection. You must connect with your audiences on a much deeper emotional level than ever before. Trust and credibility matter. Customers, prospective franchisees, staff, suppliers, and all stakeholders are looking for the same thing – brands and businesses that they feel connected to.  Through anything from founding stories and future vision to common goals, values or personalities.

Your PR and content strategy should be focused on building a genuine connection with your audiences. Because (say it with us now!) people buy from brands that they know, like and trust. And that’s anything from a burger to a franchise, so don’t make the mistake of thinking this doesn’t apply to you.

Generally, we know this sounds very sensible and you know you should be doing it. But often, many highly skilled and competent business owners have no idea where to start. If that’s you, don’t feel intimidated or embarrassed. It’s hard to step back and view your own business through a ‘commercial emotion’ lens. That’s where third-party insight and guidance is often valuable. PR professionals should work with you to identify angles from within your brand and structure campaigns that will resonate with your audiences. And, ultimately, compel them to act. 

Team Rev regularly share PR advice and posts to help you make the most of your PR activity. To make sure you don’t miss out, follow them on social media: LinkedIn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lucy Archer
Lucy Archer
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