I get an inbound email from our contact form on our home page from a tech company that’s looking to build their brand with earned media coverage. Fantastic!
Before I hop on a Zoom call with this prospective PR agency client, I take a look at their website content, blog, social media.
I’m looking for key messaging. I want to see signs that some kind of SEO strategy exists (Do any keywords stick out or is their messaging a word salad of industry jargon? Has there been any effort made to grab testimonials and build case studies from happy customers?
If I see gaps, when I do hop on a call within them, I might ask:
“Who’s handling your marketing?” I’m not asking this to be mean or throw anyone under the bus. I just want to know that there’s someone or perhaps even a team that’s already working to fill in these gaps in the marketing foundation.
“Is this kind of content marketing effort in the works already?” If it’s not getting done before day 1 of the PR Kickoff, or if it looks like the company wasn’t even aware these gaps existed, that’s a red flag. It doesn’t mean we won’t work with this company. But it does mean we’ll need to offer some marketing strategy recommendations. Perhaps, if they just can’t do it internally, we’ll offer content marketing services as well.
“What’s your timeline for building out your content marketing?” Basically, I just want to know that they at least have an internal deadline to get their basic messaging sorted before we climb on board. The website is always going to be a work in progress. But as the hub of all online marketing, it needs some loving attention from content marketing experts.\
Why does the content marketing foundation matter to the effectiveness of our PR campaigns?
Let’s say this company hires our PR agency to get their story out there, without a content marketing foundation already built.
That’s going to hurt our chances of getting reporters to actually cover our PR client.
Think about how the PR process plays out. We’ll pitch reporters with a creative news story idea (because that is what we do all day, or most of the day). Some percentage of these reporters will think, “Yes, this sounds cool!”
The first thing this reporter will do? Go to our PR client’s website and social media. Before this journalist ever responds to us with a “Yup, let’s arrange an interview with the CEO you mentioned,” they will want to check that this company seems legitimate.
Is this company some kind of fly-by-night operation with confusing messaging that’s likely to be shuttered at any time?
Or does this company know what it does and who it serves?
If it’s the latter, the reporter may reach out. And that’s what we want.
If we manage to snag a reporter’s attention for a minute, it does us and our PR client no good if the reporter decides, “Nah. Not worth my time.”
What kind of marketing content shows that your company is “cool”?
Quality content and authentic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) builds value and trust with your audience. I’m talking about the kind of trust that you don’t get by just paying for it with ads (which can get very expensive, very fast) or with sketchy paid links on websites hosted overseas that may just disappear from time to time.
According to recent Google data, out of the total search engine clicks on desktop devices, 45.1 percent of searches resulted in organic clicks. Just 1.8 percent of searches resulted in paid clicks.
That organic stuff is what you want. Instead of relying on advertising, you’re getting clicks in from search results that pop up naturally.
Organic clicks are a sign that your SEO game is on point. Now, keep in mind, this takes time (yes, even with a ChatGPT assist). Pay special attention to the content on your website and blog.
At our PR agency, we actually get a ton of organic visits from prospective PR clients because we’ve put in the time and effort here, literally for years.
Our website tells our story and showcases our services, while our blog is our hub of PR education and insights. I encourage any kind of company to do what we’ve done.
The rules we use to do awesome content marketing for our own PR agency
Here’s a quick checklist we follow internally for guiding content creation on our website or blog about our PR agency’s services, processes, etc.
Have a content marketing strategy and refer to it often. Companies use their website, blog and social media platforms to tell their story (which helps your sales engine, because stories help sell), educate their customers about products and services and improve customer experience.
Content marketing strategy is a big fuzzy category, but here are some factors to consider as you build it out:
What topics should you focus on? What do your customers need to know about right now?
Who is this audience – and actually, is it more accurate to say audiences? Do you have different customer personas for different products?
Do they have questions about how to use your products or services so they get the best bang for their buck?
Is your CEO a thought leader in your industry, sharing captivating insights that help customers (or other business people) succeed? If not, could they become that?
Finally, are some topics more urgent than others because your business has seasonal promotions, or because you’ve cracked the code on something important this week?
You won’t be able to build out comprehensive content marketing pieces on every conceivable topic overnight, so pick your priorities.
Do your keyword phrase research (or don’t do content marketing at all). I’m not going into a big keyword phrase deep dive here. Entire books have been written on this stuff. But longtail keyword phrases (basically, 3 to 5-word combinations) are key. These keyword phrases describe who you are and what you do in a way that customers (or reporters) are already searching for you. You’re not creating weird combinations of phrases you hope will become popular. Instead, you’re tapping into the organic search traffic that already exists by putting the exact word combinations on your website and blog.
If you don’t do this basic research, then your whole content marketing effort might be a time-intensive and costly exercise in spinning your wheels.
Quantity has a quality all its own. You don’t necessarily need hundreds or thousands of pages to stand out. You just need more (and better) content than your competition. The more high-quality SEO content you’ve got, the better off you’ll be.
If your nearest competitors have tons of content already, that doesn’t mean you can’t beat them… eventually. Start your content marketing engine and your fresh SEO’d content should start making an impact.
Content is as long as it needs to be. Every blog post needs to be at least 300 words (More often, our own blog posts are 400 to 2,000 words). The higher your word count, the better Google can understand and rank your content. That doesn’t mean you should add meaningless content for the sake of it. It does mean that you need to meet a minimum of 300, and ensure the content is as relevant as possible.
Consider your headline and meta description carefully. For SEO purposes, the headline needs to include the focused keyword phrase used throughout the body content.
Meta descriptions are summaries that help web crawlers and humans find your stuff. Yes, it still appears to be a thing. To adjust your meta descriptions, they can usually be found under the SEO section of a blog menu. This description, on average, should be 160 characters.
Authentic SEO is all about playing the long game. It’s not just about tweaking algorithms or gaming the system—it's about genuinely connecting with your audience through valuable content, trustworthy information, and a seamless user experience.
How much web content do we need before we hire a PR agency?
We don’t ask new PR clients to churn out dozens or hundreds of new pages to get their messaging and SEO perfect before we kick off PR services.
There’s also an opportunity cost to delaying your PR efforts, if you’ve got timely news to share about an exciting new product launch, funding announcement, etc. (SEO is a long game. Don’t think you’ll do it all in a week or two.)
You might just need a few well-crafted website pages and a couple of recent social media posts. That might be all you need to give the impression to reporters (and of course, customers) that you’re running an active, exciting company that knows its own business.
That’s what we’re looking for, so that when we get a reporter interested in speaking to you, they come to your website and say “Wow. Yup, these are the experts, alright. I better book that interview with the CEO.”
Need some help with content marketing before launching your main PR efforts? Rebranding ahead of a big PR campaign? Book a call with us about how we can help your tech company with content marketing
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