April 12, 2022
Public relations tools are used primarily in building a brand image in the marketplace. Experts currently use them in communication and marketing, public relations, and website positioning. They understand that in today's world - as in today's marketing - the most important are integrated activities that will connect all areas related to sales and growth of the brand. But what exactly are public relations tools, how to use them, and which ones are considered the most useful.
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These takeaways provide insights into the effective use of various public relations tools and techniques, emphasising the importance of integrated communication and modern applications in enhancing PR campaigns.
Marketers use public relations tools in broad and interdisciplinary advertising and marketing activities. They facilitate work and maximise the achievement of effects, which are primarily considered to expand the range of the brand, increase its visibility and significantly increase sales of products or services. Public relations tools include, but are not limited to, activities such as:
In leveraging these tools, engaging a Polish PR agency can provide invaluable localised insights and strategic oversight, ensuring that PR campaigns are effectively adapted to meet the cultural and business norms of the region. This collaboration enhances brand visibility and media relations within the Polish market and beyond.
We can use these types of tools by combining activities from different scopes. Of course, you don't need to use them all at once - anyway, the list is too long to be included here, and with the rapid growth of the media these days, it grows almost overnight. However, when deciding to use public relations tools, it is essential to use them properly. That will provide us with comprehensive PR activities and reflect our company's reach and the increase in demand for a given product or service. So let's find out how to use individual tools to achieve the best results.
As we already know, public relations tools in PR campaigns can be used individually, although it is much more cost-effective to combine several different strategies. Thanks to that, we will achieve the assumed goal faster, usually to increase sales or expand the range and increase the brand's popularity in the market. How to properly combine different tools to suit our needs? First, let's find out what functions these tools perform. We can summarise it in several points:
As we can see, most of them will undoubtedly be successfully applied in today's most popular media, i.e., social networks. They include campaigns and content marketing processes related to building relationships with other entities and raising awareness about new products.
Also, building an expert position today is not a problem on social media - we can quickly post shorter or longer articles on our profile or fan page or add links to them. In addition, we can redirect our fans and followers to blogs, vlogs, informative e-books, or even audio records. Finally, suppose we plan to include social media activities in an integrated campaign, combining actions in traditional media or the organisation of special events. In that case, it is worth considering which tools will work best for this campaign.
Public relations tools are essential elements used in creating the image of a given institution or brand. The purpose of creating the image of a given individual is to create a specific image of him in public opinion. However, this is achieved not only by using PR tools but also by selecting the appropriate tools that will work in our case and their skillful application. But where do we start if we are start-up entrepreneurs? Experts from public relations companies will certainly come to our aid. However, if we would like to begin building an image on our own, here are some tips to make it easier for us.
The answers to these basic questions will help us make the first decisions related to creating our brand, and it’s an amateur mistake not to have these answers before investing in brand building. A good start here is to create a recognisable image on the market, combining a brand with a font of our choice or designed specifically for our needs by a graphic designer. Next, designing an appropriate, recognisable logo and choosing a color palette in which, for example, packaging or promotional materials will keep our brand.
The next step should be the question - how do we want to break through the client? At this point, we summarise the above-mentioned professional construction of our stand. If we're going to be our experts in this field, we would like to cooperate with specialised PR agencies dealing with content marketing.
Creating content-based on the most frequently searched questions in our field of activity is currently considered one of the most effective practices that lead to gaining an expert position. We may publish content in the form of a blog and a free e-book or encourage customers to download it from our website during a combined campaign, for example, by advertising in a magazine or magazine related to our field of activity.
The next step is choosing a content distribution channel and one of the best content distribution channels is email marketing. You need to choose a reliable ESP that will give you higher email deliverability and such tools available in the market are Klaviyo vs tinyEmail. It is a popular email marketing tool among large firms, but if you are looking for a tool that will not let you dig into your pockets, you can always look for any of the cheaper alternaives to Klaviyo. And the best deal is most of these tools can give you up to 98.9% email deliverability rate!
The last but not the least step is considering what the picture says about us. We must remember the consequences here if we plan to sell LED bulbs in one season, considering them the most environmentally friendly light source. Next, we invest in halogen bulbs that will suddenly surpass LED lamps. According to our information, customers could feel cheated at the very least. This action will reduce trust in our company and negatively affect customer relations.
Internal communication tools are currently considered one of the categories of public relations tools. The internal communication tools include, among others, the already mentioned communication audits in the company. However, popular forms of internal communication also have such basic tools. For example, employees of all levels and management can provide all relevant information by using e-mails.
Internal communication also uses newsletters or videos - sent in news or intranet - and often posted on internal channels on websites similar to the popular YouTube. Brands also use information blogs intended primarily for internal communication and the opportunities currently guaranteed by social media.
Each of these methods enjoys more or less efficiency and scope, depending on the target group, preferences, age, profession, and form of employment. But, undoubtedly, the most commonly used emails and newsletters are not as effective as their popularity might suggest. That’s why many companies are abandoning them and opting to use more modern forms, such as roles, podcasts, or other methods of internal communication.
But why is effective communication within the company considered a public relations activity? It's easy. This activity aims to build the company's image not from the outside but from the inside - in the eyes of employees and people in their immediate vicinity. So, for example, for the employee not to tell his family and friends after leaving how much he does not recommend the products or services of the company for which he is employed, the company should also take care of the people he employs. And not just those outside the institution.
The most important thing is efficient communication between the employee and the company's representative in his immediate superiors.
It should work in both directions - both the company representative and the employees should feel that they can move on to the other side with any problem that worries them or causes problems in the company from their perspective. However, the image of internal communication must necessarily be 100% consistent with the message the company sends from outside.
For example, suppose our company presents itself on the market as the most ecological brand in the given area. In that case, while employees throw away tons of unnecessary photocopies or artificial packaging in which goods are ordered daily, internal communication will surely suffer.
As we already know, we can use public relations tools individually, but they are much more effective when we combine the benefits of several different types of activities. In this way, we will combine activities in traditionally understood public relations and traditional and online marketing, advertising, and social media activities.
Its scope, therefore, coincides with integrated communication, which we call combining activities at different levels, both in traditional media and on social networks and events organised by our brand. Public relations tools, of course, influence the results achieved in each of these areas, thanks to which we can successfully use many of them in integrated image communication.
Thanks to a wide range of activities, we can choose more efficient and customised tools depending on what action we are currently carrying out or achieving the most desired goal. However, our company's overall marketing strategy must be consistent with all other activities, such as sales strategy or public relations. The described tools will certainly help us standardise and harmonise individual actions, and the simultaneous and thoughtful use of multiple communication channels is a guarantee of success!
Thanks to dozens of applications currently appearing for phones, tablets, or computers, I can easily apply various techniques and tools in public relations in our daily work. I have selected a few of them that I consider the most useful after application. See if they will help you build your brand image, create content for your website or create a profile on one of the many social networks!
Trello is a free scheduling app. If our problem is a lack of motivation and problems with concentration, Trello will help us overcome disorganisation and finally move on to constructive work. In this application, we can place tasks on whiteboards, create cards with projects and lists, add attachments, delegate tasks and check if we completed them.
Assigning colors and markers makes work more accessible and more enjoyable. This makes it an ideal tool for integrated communication planning for both start-up entrepreneurs and people who have been in the market for many years, who from time to time have to organise all the information or save ideas for future marketing campaigns.
You absolutely must know about people who are involved in website positioning. Google AdWords Planner helps users find and choose the right keywords for our search campaign. It also allows you to predict their performance, plan campaign budget rates, and view search statistics that redirect users to our website. And as you know, the right keywords are a guarantee of the effectiveness of our advertising activities and a chance to gain expert status in the eyes of customers, which certainly increases the recognition of our brand and interest in its products or services.
An essential part of your brand image is your brand reputation. Nowadays, brand reputation is mainly built over online reviews. Therefore, it’s crucial to be aware of what’s being said about you online. Whether the reviews are positive or negative, they need to be addressed. justLikeAPI can help you with it! It’s an online review aggregator that can help you collect, monitor, and answer reviews on various platforms.
FreshMail is a very intuitive, friendly, and easy tool for creating and sending messages. It allows you to quickly and painlessly create newsletter templates and distribute them even to people who do not deal with IT problems. Thanks to FreshMail, every marketing post or even one-time post will be formatted appropriately and aesthetically. We can always go back to previously sent content and create a new marketing mailing project based on it. It is ideal for creating newsletters for customers and people interested in our services and preparing concise, transparent, and effective emails sent as part of internal communication within the company or enterprise.
MySignature is a simple online email signature generator. It allows you to easily create branded email signatures for Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and Office 365 clients and make your business emails look even more professional. No technical background needed.
Generate email signatures by using any internet-connected device, no matter whether it is a smartphone or tablet. Being mobile-optimised, MySignature saves time while allowing users to create multiple email signatures even on the go.
Free photos with photos or graphics are friends of everyone who creates content for publishing. Unfortunately, we don't always have our photos, and if time is running out, the best solution is to use photos from free promotions. Whether we use the photos on social networks, in internal communication in the company, in marketing communication, or in custom publishing, we must remember that we use the photos only in accordance with the license granted to them! However, we can easily find images suitable for commercial use and do not require the author or the page from which we downloaded them, which will significantly facilitate our work.
This program is a dream come true for those who do not design graphics professionally but love beautiful aesthetic content. This free online tool is an invaluable help in creating graphics for social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others.
Moreover, it has adequately defined graphic formats required by these portals. In addition, it is a mine of free graphics, icons, and fonts - perfect for creating graphics to decorate entries on social networks and any graphic design created for the needs of integrated communication marketing activities.
Colorcinch is an intuitive photo editor that allows you to crop, resize, and enhance your photos with just a few clicks. It comes with hundreds of AI-powered photo effects and editing tools. You can elevate your photos by adjusting their color, vibrance, exposure, clarity, and more. It also has a vast collection of stock images, vectors, masks, and overlays that you can play around with. As a result, you can create stunning photos for your blog and social media posts on the fly.
Remaining on the topic of social media, it is worth mentioning the tool that makes it easier for us to match the profile picture with the background photo by combining them. Thanks to the appropriate combination of graphics, the fan page looks professional, exciting, and very modern. And this is what social media is all about - if we want to attract a customer, our fan page can't look sloppy or designed by someone with an aesthetic sense of a few years. In addition to regularly updating the content of our profile, we should also take care of the appearance of the site itself, and we can do that thanks to TimeLine Cover Banner.
There has been a considerable change in how PR is handled in the past decade. PR has gone from being a one-way street to a two-way street that includes social media and new ways of storytelling. As a result, there has been an explosion in new PR companies due to the rise of marketing automation tools.
PR tools of the future will be more accessible, cheaper, and can be used with multiple platforms. In conclusion, PR has leaped in the right direction and is now integrating into our lives.
Hardik Oza is an SEO consultant with more than 12 years of experience. He helps companies to grow their businesses. He shares his thoughts on additional publications like SEMrush, Search Engine People, and Social Media Today. Follow him on Twitter @Ozaemotion.
