Public relations is concerned with the interests of the company – its public image and reputation – and not, in contrast to content marketing, the interests of the customer.
Public relations is defined as “the professional maintenance of a favorable public image by a company or other organization or a famous person” and predominantly relies on strong media relations and management to fulfill its brief.
But with content marketing, the company becomes the media and publishes directly to the target market, creating and curating content that adds value by providing good quality information, news, and education that helps the reader solve problems and make better decisions.
It is corporate journalism, with very different values, aims, and objectives to public relations. There is no overt promotion or publicity garnering, nor does the company take or defend a position with content marketing. It does not walk a corporate line.
Content marketing is about creating and publishing news, information, and education that adds value to the life of the reader in some way, shape, or form. True content marketing can be viewed as a community service that enhances the company’s standing and promotes engagement within the target market.
I have seen some examples where a public relations agency has tried to do content marketing with poor results. One such piece was put out by a public relations agency, working with the native advertising department of a newspaper. Basically, news journalists and PR people teamed up and got it spectacularly wrong.
They wrote an article on behalf of a client – who is a supplier to a certain industry – bemoaning the fact that few companies in the identified industry benefited from government work. The idea I assume was to show the client’s empathy with the identified industry, but the result was one long whinge that benefited nobody.
A content marketing agency would have looked at that and said: “So most companies in industry ‘M’ get no government works? Let’s find some companies that do have government work, and ask them how they did it”.
Or they could have written an article about ‘how to win more government work’.
Both of those alternatives would have added value and presented all concerned in a positive light, but perhaps that’s the problem – PR is about pandering to the media and protecting the client. Content marketing, however, is a marketing activity and should be left to the marketing department to deliver value, not vacuous content that satisfies a news reporter's sense of what’s newsworthy.
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