Tag: brightsky public relations

How can you describe the world right now? Isn’t it volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous? You don’t know what’s going to happen next and frankly, no one will be surprised anymore if another catastrophe hits us. Ever since the pandemic in March, the world as we know it has become chaotic. Communities are in shamble and businesses are closing. Businesses, especially, need effective Lakeland public relations to help them get over the slump last year.

Businesses must find new ways to thrive. Here’s how PR can help them:

Reliance on Social Media

More than 50% of the world’s population is now on social media. They use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to gather information, connect with their friends, and voice out their opinions. These are all important elements in the branding of a business. They must seek information about your business, as well as share what they know about you with their friends and voice out their support of your business.

Misinformation and Fake News

Everyone with a smartphone can become news creators. Journalists are not the only ones wielding the mighty pen to inform the public about what’s happening around the world. Virtually anyone who has a smartphone can suddenly become a blogger or vlogger. They spread information without the ethical foundation of journalism. A PR company can help separate the noise from the actual and truthful voice of the business.

Awareness of Social Inequalities

Never before have social inequalities become predominantly highlighted in the world. COVID-19 brought those differences to light. Underprivileged children are marginalized academically and low-income families struggle with access to health care and quality living conditions. Those in power were able to bypass many quarantine and lockdown measures while the rest of the world have to stay in their homes, which are not always great for their mental health.

Building Trust

The pandemic is forcing businesses to take a stand against social injustices. You’ve seen that during various social protests last year. The public wants these businesses to gain their trust. An increasingly weary public, however, is hard to impress. But remember that companies also have to maintain their relationships with investors, so this is a tricky thing to do.

Battling the virus isn’t just about your physical health. It’s about politics and economics, too. In an increasingly volatile world and hyper-sensitive public, it’s important to have the right Lakeland public relations strategy to guide you through every crisis and disaster.

There are two things that the pandemic made very clear to Lakeland public relations. First, businesses need a strong communication strategy that will tide them over to the new norm. Second, you must be adaptive. You must learn how powerful the pivot is.

This means that you have to learn about the changes in consumer behavior in the past year. What are these behaviors? How are they affecting the landscape?

Emphasis on Health and Safety

The past year made consumers very insecure about their health and safety. Consumers are not only purchasing hand sanitizers for their health, but they’re purchasing them because they believe in the brand. They are particular about buying brands that they perceive to be reputable.

Value-based Spending

What is value-based spending? It refers to consumers buying from brands that align with their values. Brands need to make a stand on social, political, and environmental issues. Consumers now want to support brands that make a stand on certain issues. In the future, it is also believed that consumers will buy locally more. People are looking at brands for support and leadership.

Online Connections

During a time when people are asked to stay at home, does it surprise you that they are looking for more connections even online? Invest in e-commerce, virtual events, content, and online channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and many more. In short, social connections transitioned online. Consumers still want face-to-face interactions but because that is not possible right now, they turned to social media.

New Technology

Shoppers want augmented reality and virtual reality. These technologies allowed them to experience a product virtually before buying them. For example, you want to redesign your room. How are you going to “experience” a bed? AR and VR make that possible. They will let you experience the product first before you need to buy it. You can see the details of the product up close, thanks to virtual reality.

Data Analytics

Thanks to the comfort consumers feel now about sharing their data, you have something to analyze. Your business should be largely based on the analysis of the data you gather. When is your target market mostly online? What do they want to see? What kind of content pushes them to engage with you?

When you create the message for your Lakeland public relations, these are the consumer behaviors that you should consider. These will help you come up with the right message that can represent your client’s brand well.

Even before the pandemic, the world is already changing for Lakeland public relations. There was already a great need for it to recreate and reimagine its purpose to keep up with the new trends. The pandemic accelerated these changes and puts pressure on the industry to re-carve a niche for itself again. So, what’s the agenda for 2021?

Exhibit Authenticity

Nothing else matters now in every industry other than the authenticity of the brands. Public relations agencies must work to help brands identify who they are, and what makes them better than their competitors. They need to communicate this authenticity through internal communications with their staff and through external campaigns that will bring more audience to the company.

Reimagine Purpose

Marketing a company has become easier because of digital devices and platforms like social media. With just a click of a button, businesses can reach out and engage with their audience. This is making it hard for PR agencies to carve a role for themselves in this entirely new world that modern technology created. Where should they begin?

Now more than ever, PRs need to identify themselves as a separate entity from marketing agents. PR is different because PR is earned. That mantra should be repeated again and again until clients fully understand that they cannot reap the rewards of PR through marketing strategies.

Solving Societal Dilemma

Marketing is all about selling a product or a service. PR is different because it worries about the reputation of the company. Society is linked. We saw that during the outbreak of the coronavirus. PRs need to show the human value of the company. Why does it matter to its customers? What can it bring to the table? Companies who want good PR must show how they are contributing to solving societal dilemmas and challenges.

Centered Around Consumers

PRs need to answer the age-old question: what do consumers want? They need to address the issues that hound consumers. This is not about the clients per se anymore. If your strategy doesn’t evoke the right emotions from your target audience, you’ll never be given that chance again. Most of the time, PR agencies only have one shot to make their case known. If the consumers don’t see the value in what you are offering, they’ll most likely not give you a second look.

The Lakeland public relations is no different from any other industry. It, too, has been badly affected by the pandemic. But it has been a long time coming since the effect of digital marketing in the PR industry has been prevalent since before the pandemic.

For years, Lakeland public relations has been interchangeable with digital marketing and social media marketing. For marketers, they are one and the same. But we all know that it is not true. Public relations are earned while marketing in itself is merely the persuasion of buyers to purchase products and services from a particular company. But with Covid-19, this raises the question of whether or not public relations is still relevant.

When the pandemic was announced back in March, everyone scrambles to their feet. Who cares about what’s authentic and inauthentic in the news anymore? All businesses and consumers know is that their lives will never be the same after the announcement. How apt and truthful that is for them. There has never been an event in modern times that is as impactful as Covid-19 is to us. And when the dust finally settles, we see businesses for what and who they are. Not all of them are relevant and sometimes, the media fools us into thinking that some businesses are more important than others.

So with the proliferation of fake news and our own dependence on social media, can Lakeland public relations still survive? The answer is a resounding yes. No matter where you look, public relations surround you. It’s ingrained in everything you do and every product that you purchase.

Public relations is built on trust. That’s something that no one can take away from a company. With good relations with the public, a company can fail at something and get back on its feet the next day. When the public trusts the company, that is all the company needs to succeed and thrive. A lot of companies have made mistakes in the past but with a loyal and trusting clientele behind them, they continue to soldier on.

Covid-19 Messaging

You can see public relations in the way these companies crafted their Covid-19 messages. Didn’t the brands come out with their messages about the coronavirus when the news came out about the pandemic? Addressing the impact of the virus on their operations and processes was one of the first things that businesses did. That is Lakeland public relations right there.

Whenever a company tries to reach out to its market, you see the hands of public relations. Even amid this turmoil, public relations remain to be the most effective communication tool that can assure and satisfy an ever-demanding market.

Practically every country you can think of has been in lockdown since March. While restrictions have certainly eased in many parts of the world, there is no denying the fact that Covid-19 hasn’t exactly been kind to service-based industries like Lakeland public relations. As much as businesses need to realign their PR strategies and come up with ways to assure their customers, many companies are on a wait-and-watch approach, which meant halting their PR budgets and putting partnerships on hold.

On the financial side of things, this looks bad for the industry. It has been flourishing and blossoming for the past few years that there was never a doubt in anyone’s mind that public relations will continue to shape industries. But as well know, Covid-19 was an unprecedented event, one that we were unprepared for. So as much as businesses understand the importance of doing PR work at this time, they are also on a financial setback.

Making Brands Trustworthy

Companies can’t forever neglect public relations. At some point, they would have to create a strategy that will bring back trust to their brand. That wouldn’t be easy seeing as many people have been desensitized and made into a cynic by the coronavirus. Is your store safe? Do you follow health protocols? Are you reliable? Did you make things easier for your customers during the lockdown?

People are reluctant to trust brands that did not transition during the outbreak. If you did not offer anything new—such as delivery services and refunds—during the height of the outbreak, what makes you think your customers will just return once things are settled?

A good PR company can build reliability about the brand. It can create an image of positivity and reliability so that as soon as the situation improves, you can reconnect with your customers.

Breakthrough for Small Businesses

There is a chance for small businesses to break into the market. Since big businesses have cut their Lakeland public relations and marketing budgets, this is a good a time as any for small businesses to pounce on the chance. One, public relations companies will charge less since they have fewer clients. Two, they can focus more on your business. And three, a small business will get the maximum exposure since big players are taking a back seat.

Public relations is not a foolproof strategy for marketing your business. Instead, it complements the methods you use to promote and market your products and services.

After spending the last 10 months quarantined in our homes and deathly afraid of the coronavirus, the government is now allowing us to go out, socialize (while practicing physical distancing), and spend. The economy, after all, depends on our spending this holiday season. But businesses have got it tougher. They now need Lakeland public relations to alter the misconceptions that emerged over the last few months and assure customers that they are on top of the situation.

Direct Email Marketing

Who said that email is dead? It is very much alive in the 21st century. Email is the be-all and end-all of marketing strategies, as well as public relations. Why should you want to wait for your customers to visit the website or social media page for them to see your Covid-19 message? Why couldn’t you reach out to them through an email? You can even personalize the email so that it will be addressed to them directly.

Website

Your company website is your home. It is the first thing that people will look for when they want to know something about your company like how it is handling the Covid-19 crisis. It is also a hub of information about your company. What are you doing? Have you transferred to an online store? Is your physical store still operating?

When customers open your website, they should be greeted by a message about what you did and are doing about the pandemic. Whether it is to close your store and expand your online shopping operations, your web visitors should know what to expect.

After all, they are the ones keeping your business afloat. They deserve to know how a business they are supporting is coping under the stress of the Covid-19 crisis.

Social Media

The easiest way to reach out to your audience is through social media. They can even share the message with their network, allowing you to reach audiences that you wouldn’t have had any access to if not for your customers. The only problem with posting corporate messages on social media is that it can get covered up by other things—your own posts and the posts of your customers’ network.

While you can pin your Covid-19 message on top of your page, this isn’t always a sustainable method because you might need to post another important message about your business. You will have to choose between your Covid-19 message and a post about the holiday season.

The job of a Lakeland public relations is to identify the right avenue for your Covid-19 message. Where will your audience most likely see your post? How are they going to interpret it? This is what a PR agency needs to do for a business like yours.

Companies have to be responsible to their customers and clients at all times. This is even more important during the Covid-19 pandemic when thousands of businesses suddenly find themselves in limbo. Should they permanently close down? Can they weather the storm? But more than that, how are they going to reach out to their customers and what are they going to say? That’s how important Lakeland public relations is to companies right now.

Responsible communication is at the core of every PR strategy during a Covid-19 world. Companies must inform their clients and customers if there were confirmed Covid-19 cases within their staff. The same goes if they were able to trace that one of their customers had Covid-19. They have to be responsible enough to inform health experts and the general public about the possible exposure.

Depending on the nature of your business, you need to constantly communicate with your customers. If your business was one of those that needed to close during the height of the outbreak, then you should have communicated with your customers when you plan to be back and where they can reach you in the meantime.

If you didn’t transition to a digital store, the least you can do is leave an email address that they can write to if there are post-sales questions about some of the products they bought from your store in the past.

Update Customers Regularly

Have there been changes in your status since the pandemic was announced in March? If so, make sure that you have already reached out to your customers about it.

Don’t just appear on their feed one day as if nothing happened. Explain what happened to your company when you had to close down because of the pandemic. If you are opening now, what actions have you taken to ensure that your place of business is safe? Are there new safety measures in place that weren’t there before?

If you are investing in “anti-Covid” technologies such as an air purifier, make sure that your customers know about it, too. It’s good for your business to keep them updated about the investments you are making to ensure their safety in your store.

Be Honest

A lot of businesses have to close down because of the pandemic. If you are lucky enough to still remain open, be honest to your customers that this was not because you were lucky or that you were infallible. Recognize the people (your employees) who made it possible for you to still remain open despite the pandemic. This is great for your Lakeland public relations as it will greatly improve your reputation.

It will shock you how Lakeland public relations is present in your life. Every day, you are inundated by marketing campaigns, advertisements, news items, and public announcements that have PR written all over it. No business or political leader or government or celebrity could ever survive without public relations. This is the core of their existence.

But every day, we hear misconceptions about public relations, too. Whether it’s PR teams deliberately starting a scandal or them paying off journalists and editorial desks, we’ve probably heard all we can about the evils of public relations. Not all of these are true, of course, and we’re here to debunk these myths.

Bad Press Is Good Press

This might have worked in the past when all you need is for the news coverage to get your name right. It’s easy to be known in public when newspapers are picking up your story for free.

This doesn’t work anymore right now. Because of the internet age, people are quick to “cancel” businesses that received bad press. Say, for example, a business had an issue about a labor dispute. Back then, PR will work on this to turn things around. This doesn’t work right now because people on the internet are going to “cancel” these businesses faster than you can say the word cancel.

PR Is About Press Conferences and Press Releases

Sure, you can send press releases to your target journalists once a day or even more if there are important updates, but this isn’t just what you do. It’s bad for public relations to focus more on press releases and press conferences than building up the brand in the real world. If you keep on organizing and hosting press conferences, no one will want to attend them anymore. Press conferences should be reserved for the biggest possible events.

Good Public Relations Is Forever

This is not true. There’s such a thing as a one-hit-wonder. This means that personalities and brands can have their 15-minute of fame on the internet. They skyrocket to the top for a day or two, but they don’t stay there. That’s how fickle the industries are. Even if you get a million hits right now, there is no assurance that you will get the same once you launch a new product.

These myths should be put to rest so companies can finally realize how important Lakeland public relations is. These misconceptions can be causing companies to think that they don’t need a good PR strategy to promote their brand.

We’ve heard it again and again—bad PR is good PR. This means that even with negative publicity, you can still raise awareness about your brand and company. Many companies have done good in converting bad public relations into good PR. By apologizing, reaching out to those affected, and admitting their mistakes, plenty of companies have risen from the ashes after a particularly bad Lakeland public relations.

So, that begs the question: is bad PR considered good PR? Yes and no. No company should deliberately get in the news for bad publicity and try to use that bad reputation to raise awareness about its brand. There is no fool-proof formula to turning things around. While you may take the risk, who’s to say that things will not go worse than it already is?

To say that bad PR is good PR means you have a credible and solid PR strategy to turn things around. For example, someone complained about your products on social media. What’s the right step for your company to take? Is it to deny the plausibility of the complaint happening? Is it to attack the complainant? Or, is it to apologize, get to the bottom of the problem, and reach out to the complainant?

Far too many times, companies are on the defensive. They want to sweep bad publicity under the rug so no one knows the better. But in such a hyper-connected world, is there a way for companies to hide bad reviews and unsuccessful campaigns? Consumers today are more informed. They know when they are being duped, and they know when they are being used.

To turn bad publicity around, your Lakeland public relations team needs to be on top of things. They need to proactively reach out to the complainants to find out the root of the problem. Once they identified the problem, they should work on resolving this all while their PR team is reaching out to any more customers affected by the same problem. When one complaint is raised, that doesn’t mean no other customers are experiencing the same problem. Most of the time, customers will just “let it be” for the sake of not arguing with companies.

However, if you made a reputation for your company as a company that answers to issues and problems, you will encourage your customers to speak up. That’s far better than watching your sales drop without knowing why. By identifying and addressing the problems, you are giving yourself the chance to better your company.