Image Building through Digital P R

Friends, Thank you very much for taking out time from your very busy schedule to read my blog(s). I really feel encouraged after reading your feedback in the comments column. Friends, presenting 67th blog titled “Image Building through Digital P R”.

Friends, last year in August I was honoured to be one of the main speakers at a workshop on ‘Effective Use of Social Media’ for Sh. M. Venkaiah Naidu, Hon’ble Vice President of India’s social media team members who are managing all digital platforms of Hon’ble Vice President at Vice President House, New Delhi. And, the topic was – Public Relations with a focus on Online PR / Digital PR. 

Friends, before coming to the topic, I would like to share some latest important data to ponder…….

  India’s population is over 139 Cr. as of now.

  Smart phone users in India are around 70 Cr.

  Around 63 Cr. Indians are using internet.

  Facebook Users in India are around 35 Cr.

  Twitter users in India are around 2.00 Cr.

  Instagram users in India are around 1.50 Cr.

Friends, now I come to the topic i.e. Image Building through Digital P R. I will try to discuss each and every aspect of this very important topic so that you all understand it very well and with clarity. Generally the term PR relates to Public Relations but does PR stands for Public Relations only or this term can be used in other references also?

‘YES’…. We can use ‘PR’ for ‘PRESS RELATIONS’, ‘PRESS RELEASE’, ‘PERSONAL RELATIONS’, ‘PROFESSIONAL RELATIONS’, and  now for PERCEPTION-REPUTATION which relates to Image building and management and is one of the core activities of public relations nowadays - “Managing Perception & Reputation” of the clients. Hence, there is a need to understand ‘Perception’ and ‘Reputation’ also.  

P for Public = Perception:

Perception is how we think about a particular person, situation, event, or anything for that matter based on the stimuli we receive and the feelings and thoughts that we have about that entity. Edward de Bono Physician, author, and originator of the term lateral thinking said that “Perception is real even when it is not reality”.

Perception means perceiving, i.e., giving meaning to the environment around us. It can be defined as a process which involves seeing, receiving, selecting, organizing, interpreting and giving meaning to the environment. Perception is an intellectual, cognitive or psychological process and also becomes a subjective process as different people may perceive the same event differently. People can be at the same place, at the same time and still come away with different opinions about what actually happened and, because everyone perceives the world in different ways, each person thinks that their version of events is correct.

Communicating and managing perceptions remain significant challenges. Our words and actions may be misinterpreted, misquoted and /or taken out of context. But if we want to shape others’ perceptions, we must take control of the messages we send and the actions we perform. We cannot succeed without consistently and accurately telegraphing our thoughts and intentions.

Now Let’s Understand Perception Management

Perception management is a type of strategy that is aimed at guiding the motives, emotions, and conclusions of another party by means of using different approaches to alter that party’s perception of past events and the projections of future events. This particular type of strategy is used in military operations in attempts to gain advantages over enemies, and also in the business world among competitors. The goal is to alter the perception of the opposing party in a way that provides the manager with an advantage that can be used successfully to score a victory or otherwise defeat that opposing party. 

The process of perception management includes the selective use of available data. In this scenario, certain facts are presented completely and concisely, while others are either presented only in part of are left out altogether. Doing so makes it easier to create a particular perception that can be sold to consumers, the citizens of a given country, or to a rival of some sort, assuming the opposing party is not privy to and does not discover the omissions.

Therefore, the art and science of perception management is all about how entities create a favorable impression of themselves to their stakeholders be it prospective or existing employees, shareholders, consumers, and society at large. Thus, organizations have to ensure that they are perceived well by their stakeholders.

R for Relation = Reputation:

Although, reputation is often difficult to define since the perception of what is and what is not reputable is in “the eye of the beholder”, a variety of definitions of reputation have been offered from a number of different academic and professional backgrounds……

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”

         - Benjamin Franklin

“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

   - Abraham Lincoln

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

  - Warren Buffet

“A brand is owned by the company, while reputation is owned by stakeholders.”

Friends, Reputation is the subjective qualitative belief a person has regarding a brand, person, company, product, or service. Reputation is the key to success and is best defined as a third-party perception of you, or your brand, and character. Reputation is an expectation of future behavior based on past experiences, which means first impressions and your stakeholder's experiences with your brand are critical to developing a positive reputation.

Reputation is a matter of perception. An organisation’s overall reputation is a function of its reputation among its various stakeholders i.e. investors, customers, suppliers, employees, regulators, politicians, non-governmental organizations, the communities in which the organisation operates,  in specific categories  e.g. product quality, corporate governance, employee relations, customer service, intellectual capital, financial performance, handling of environmental and social issues. A strong positive reputation among stakeholders across multiple categories will result in a strong positive reputation for the organisation overall.

Now Let’s Understand Reputation Management

Reputation management refers to influencing and controlling an individual’s or business’s reputation. Reputation management is making the effort to influence what and how people think of a person or brand. Sharing positive information about a brand or person to increase positive sentiment is an effective strategy for Reputation Management. Reputation management in its simplest form involves three steps:

·    1^st. Build: You must first BUILD up the reputation of your organisation to establish yourself in your particular industry.

·  2^nd. Maintain: This is daily maintenance of reputation and is what is meant to keep a organisation’s good standing in place. Organisations with an established brand presence will use this the most.

·   3^rd. Recover: This is for an organisation who has earned or received a negative reputation, whether in the general public or within their own target audience. Experts in reputation management are trained to insert positive pieces of information to “push down” the negative press or make it seem less significant.

Friends, let’s now understand how PR is the guardian of Perception and reputation.

Varied definitions of public relations have been given by academicians, public relations professionals and international bodies of public relations practitioners. Out of those many, I have just taken five definitions that also conveys PR as Perception and Reputation Management.

1^st PR is an attempt by information, persuasion, and adjustment to engineer public support for an activity, cause, movement or institution. - Edward L. Bernays

2^nd Public Relations is the art of getting believed. - Ivy Ledbetter Lee

   3^rd Public relations is the management function that identifies, establishes, and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the various publics on whom its success or failure depends. - Cutlip, Center, & Broom

4^th Public relations is the business of creating and changing attitudes. - Harold Burson

5^th Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. - Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR –UK)

Friends, Basic function of public relations is to help build trust and credibility with groups of public that are important for the organization.  What people think about the organisation much depends on views of others (perception). 

Public Relations is a discipline that looks after perception and reputation of an organisation, with the aim of earning understanding and support (perception)  and influencing opinion and behaviour (reputation). It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.’ The end result of public relations as perception and reputation management is creating goodwill of the organisation and mutual understanding between the target public and the organisation.

Now I will discuss about Digital PR or Online PR that refers to use of various online strategies such as social media, influencer outreach, content marketing, and search engine optimization to increase online presence. 

Friends, Today, PR is all about Perception, Image, and Reputation Management through strategically communicating the data combined with an engaging narrative to attract the attention of target readers, listeners, and viewers and that’s why it’s most essential to design our communication strategy based on reliable data and that’s why  use of social media has become a basic necessity and an integral part of everybody’s life because social media platforms allow brands to create and nurture relationships directly with their target publics in many ways. Also, the various uses of social media are transforming the style of functioning of almost all the professions globally.

Digital PR uses both popular and emerging social media platforms, according to the need, to affect digital campaigns that build brand awareness, improve search rankings, shaping and developing online image & reputation resulting into increased sales. Therefore, it’s important that to achieve all these objectives and in order to reach out our target audience, we must draw a Digital PR strategy to further strengthen our digital presence which should be capable enough to enhance image, visibility, and online presence of our brand.

Our Digital PR strategy should include creation and execution of digital PR campaigns that can build brand awareness and acceptance through creative storytelling that can efficiently communicate our brand’s message on a chosen digital platform which has the capability to enhance visibility of our brand and can help in building new connections with our target audiences.

Digital or Online PR includes;

Ø  Blog Development

Ø  Community Management

Ø  Content Creation

Ø  Influencer Outreach

Ø  Online PR Crisis Management

Ø  Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Ø  Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Ø  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Ø  Social Brand Campaigns

Ø  Social Media Advertising

Ø  Social Media Analysis

Ø  Social Media Strategy

Ø  Website Analytics & Reporting

Ø  Website Audit

Social Media Platforms for Digital or Online PR are as under:-

ü  Facebook

ü  FBLIVE

ü  Twitter

ü  TwitterLive

ü  Instagram

ü  InstagramLive

ü  LinkedIn

ü  LinkedInLive

ü  Pinterest

ü  YouTube

ü  Wiki

ü  Website

ü  Blog

ü  Email

ü  Webinar  

ü  Podcast

During Covid-19, social media platforms have become the main source of information as more and more people are now relying on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp to stay updated. Social media has become indispensible component of our daily routine which has led to a spike in online media consumption. 

Friends, Digital PR is very similar to traditional PR in the sense that it’s about influencing people rather than buying placement for brand content. The influence could result in a story in a magazine, newspaper or blog. It could also result in other online pick-up, including social media. Typically, when people talk about traditional PR, they are referring to traditional media: newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. With Digital PR, traditional media brands may still be a target, but often Digital PR targets online properties, along with an array of other platforms and networks, from search to social. This online approach influences: 

a.      Columnists & traditional writers (just like traditional PR)

b.      Bloggers: personal & professional

c.       Websites & brand sites

d.      Twitter  & LinkedIn users

e.      Social media users: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Flicker, etc.

f.        Awards, events and exhibitions

g.      Directories, lists and organizations

h.      Web searchers

    There are a wide variety of tactics and proportions - with some favoring search while others favour placing online content as editorials and guest blogs. Digital PR incorporates journalism, creative writing and storytelling, sales, media, SEO, social media, community management, customer relations, web design & management and on and on.

Tools and tactics that are most effective for Digital PR are…….

Search Engine Optimization:

Search is the top method for finding information online. Keyword optimizing news content is a key device for Online PR professionals. Optimizing news content for relevant and popular phrases can help that content rank well in the search engines. Improved search visibility helps marketing efforts, online reputation and it can attract analysts, journalists and bloggers researching your industry.

Social Media:

Understanding social media relations is an important part of a Online PR effort. The audiences a company is trying to reach or influence are spending time on and being influenced by social media. Social participation in an Online PR platform means connecting with and engaging influentials and customers to perpetuate a positive brand image as well as identifying and empowering brand ambassadors. Proactive with fans helps dispel negative brand attention and accentuate what’s positive. It is essential to be open with and useful to social communities and to adhere to both implicit and explicit ‘social rules’ rather than just dropping links to what you’re promoting.

Digital Assets: ‘If it can be searched on, it can be optimized’. The video, audio, podcasts, images, and many other digital assets hosted on most company websites represent many opportunities for pull based PR. Optimizing digital assets with relevant keywords and either promoting or submitting to vertical search engines like YouTube and Flickr can provide additional exposure to media that conduct online research as well as end customers. Optimizing more than standard text content for PR creates additional entry points to news content and can improve search based discovery.

Blogging:

When done right, a blog can be an incredible PR asset. Blog is an opportunity for an individual like me or a brand to create and publish its own content to a relevant online audience of content creators. Well-optimized and linked blog posts can rank well in the search engines making them easy to find for journalists and bloggers researching stories. Blogger relations is often more successful when the company being pitched has its own blog to point to.

Search and Social Media Monitoring:

With so many content creators online, the chance for both negative and positive brand mentions increases dramatically. Yet many tools exist to help the online PR professionals effectively monitor brand reputation. Companies can set up free alerts using tools like Google Alerts, Social Mention or Twitter to watch for mentions of their brand name, competitors’ names, industry news, and important key names. Social media monitoring data can be used to mine new ideas, keep tabs on competitors, identify brand ambassadors and address any negative press quickly and directly. Monitoring search engine rankings of news content can provide important feedback for news optimization efforts and provide insight into search traffic effectiveness. 

Benefits of Digital or Online PR:

a.      Establish yourself as an expert in your field

b.      Build brand awareness

c.       Build your reputation

d.      Counteract any negativity about your business

e.      Generate publicity for your business,

f.        Increase traffic to your Website

g.      Grow your business

Friends, Perception and Reputation Management is an appealing concept for public relations professionals as it links public relations to the organisation it represents, and suggests a dialogue with the top management around a topic of pressing importance. Perception and reputation is not to be viewed or managed in isolation, but as part of the never-ending public relations strategy of the organisation.

Learning Digital or Online PR for perception and image management is an exciting and excellent area of work, because the Web is constantly changing and evolving, with new opportunities and channels opening up all the time and very recently a new digital app “Club House” has emerged as a Digital PR tool and I’m trying to get familiar with the app and soon will reign there too.

Thank you for reading the blog. Cheers……….

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