Ignore the Power of Online Marketing & Media Opportunities at Your Peril

Now an ever increasing part of the media mix, interactive websites, social and business networking sites, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, plus discussion forums covering a myriad of subject matters, all allow businesses to access their target markets, easily, and cost effectively.

Whatever the size of a business, whatever the product or service, online media opportunities abound.

30 years ago, when I started advising clients on effective public relations, the humble printed press release reigned supreme.

At Rennie Randell Associates, the press release still plays an important role in our communication with the media, but increasingly the journalists we work with get much of their information from online services, such as Twitter feeds, blogs, websites, and email.

From the printed national newspaper e.g. The Times, leading consumer magazine e.g. House & Garden to business and professional titles such as Architects Journal or The Director, the trend is to produce online versions as well.

Add to this hundreds of online only magazines, and online versions of TV programmes, it is easy to see that every single business needs to be savvy about digital media, and the opportunities it creates for exposure to their specific target audience.

Everyone talks about the ‘world-wide web’ but the same power that can transmit a message from a multi-national company across the world in a matter of minutes, can also be used by the one-person-business to send an equally important message across town to its customers. All companies are the same size online!

As with all marketing strategies, it is essential to have clearly stated objectives and goals, in mind. If your business ‘sells’ online, then your goal is to drive traffic to your website, where they can buy the goods and services you offer.

If your business is ‘brick based’, your website is probably an additional shop window where the customer can find out all about your company, its services and products, and then be encouraged to visit your premises.

Whatever the business, the goal is to increase the number of visitors to your website, and this is where a simple blog and a Twitter feed can be such a useful tool. One is good, but in my opinion having both is a much better policy!

Ideally, a Twitter feed should attract readers to your blog, and this in turn should encourage people to visit your website.

One of the strengths of Twitter is its 140 character limit, (no room for rambling!). Twitter won’t let you transmit a long message, but it has enough capacity to send out a well-worded invitation to get more information by clicking through to another site.

Its small message size is Twitter’s big advantage, because people can and do receive ‘Tweets’ just about anywhere they can get a signal on their mobile.

Where you direct them from the ‘Tweet’ is up to you. You can send a link directly through to your website – at Rennie Randell Associates, we send out a Twitter alert whenever we post a new press release to our website press section – or you can direct the reader to a blog for a less formal presentation – usually by an individual.

You are currently reading such a blog (I’ll leave it to others to judge if it’s a good example or not!), and it gives me the chance to discuss a range of topics that the more corporate Rennie Randell Associates website would not be the most appropriate platform for.

However if you would like to find out more about the company or its clients, there are a number of links on the blog that will let you do that in the click of a couple of buttons!