By Andy Lowe
I have not come across a company that doesn’t have a website – though some haven’t been updated or rebranded since the days of DOS. That’s right; I’m old enough to remember DOS. In general, business owners know what to include: who you are, what you sell and why you do it (a lot of companies have trouble with the latter). But, if you’re a business trying to grow your client base, get more media attention and improve your public relations – taking a more conscious approach to your website is a great start.
Here are three ways good web content can help your PR:
Become Your Own Newsource
Your company’s Newsroom and Blog are great pages to let customers and journalists know exactly what is going on at your company. The newsroom is where you can share recent coverage, showcase which outlets and journalists you’ve worked with in the past and highlight what subjects your company can speak about with authority.
The newsroom should include a press kit (photos, video, audio, etc.) for journalists to use without having to email back and forth with you directly – it makes their job easier. You should also include your company’s press releases, press coverage, additional references and YOUR MEDIA CONTACT information. Save the Redwoods League (an LCI client) has an excellent newsroom for you to reference.
The blog: Blogs allow for a more personal writing style than press releases and enable subject matter experts, or new employees like me, to discuss topics that may be newsworthy – but won’t warrant a news story on their own. A warning: don’t start a blog if you can’t generate content regularly. Maintenance and consistency are essential. Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips blog, does a great job breaking down the minutia of strong writing – making it far more digestible than a textbook.
If You Can be One Thing, You Should be Efficient
That’s a quote from the irreverent comedy show Letterkenny. Its true quality work deserves to be utilized on multiple platforms. PowerPoints can become blogs; press releases can become articles; new business pitches can become case studies for other clients – its content reincarnated.
I’m not efficiently getting to the point that you should utilize your web content to repurpose and revamp materials and work you’ve already done. Take some additional time to reflect on the content you’ve already generated and the insights you’ve gained from projects completed. The media and customers you work with can ingest this information and better understand how you differentiate yourself from your competitors.
SEO for Yourself
The rules of SEO are constantly evolving – for greater insights, check out articles for SEO-dedicated companies like Moz and SEO Hacker. Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way:
- Don’t write for bots. Write for people – SEO is a means to an end, not the end itself. Advanced algorithms and spider bots from top search engines know when you’re stuffing buzzwords and jargon into every line. You will get caught, and your content value will decrease significantly.
- Use Google Trends for Finding the Right Words – Google Trends is a free tool for you to search for what the most popular terms are for your industry. Terms journalists will most likely be using to find out who the changemakers are in the fields they cover. Here you can break it down by time periods and geographic areas.
- HYPERLINK, HYPERLINK, HYPERLINK – Your website’s SEO is greatly improved by the number of in-site (within your website) and off-site (other websites) hyperlinks you can link to in a relevant manner. As a side note, your SEO is also improved by other websites and sources that link to your website. That’s one of the reasons there are seven links in this blog post.
Some of these tasks may seem daunting, but your PR folks will thank you profusely, and you’ll get better noticed by customers and media.