Fueling Conversations with Content
Traditional PR is often about media relations and delivering a story that is “on message.” Now marketing, including PR, has to get more in the business of creating content that may be informational and/or entertaining that can fuel conversations and purchase behavior. Similar to advertisers creating content when television started, today, marketers have to be in the business of content development.
Here's how you do it:
Find the stories - Where are the stories of your product or service. The story is not how one could use your product. The story is how someone actually has used their product. Success with some failure adds to the humanity of the story.
Follow social bookmarking and news recommendation sites - Sites like Digg, del.icio.us, and Newsvine offer social bookmarking services where the community of users can recommend stories and Web sites they find interesting. Those stories and sites that are of the greatest interest get more recommendations A.K.A. "Diggs," "votes," or "links." Keep an eye on these sites as they're very telling as to what people find most interesting. Although note that the site Digg, which is the most popular, is heavily skewed towards the politically minded geek set.
Fuel the conversation - Once you have stories and know what peaks your public's interest, you must tailor that content in a way that fuels discussions. For that to work, the content must be authentic, credible, and compelling. At this point, you need to completely forget about forcing messages. Your goal here is about getting people to talk about your goods and services from the heart.
