PR and digital communications are similar in that they are often, and misappropriately, overlooked in senior leadership meetings, not given due consideration when making strategic business decisions and the first to be cut when marketing budgets shrink. However, business owners and senior managers would be amiss not to reconsider the impact these two strategic functions play in the growth and resilience of any business.

Consider the importance of both PR and digital communications and how they underpin corporate reputation. Both are integral in how an organisation defines and manages its success, but they play distinctly different roles.

PR, as we know, helps organisations and spokespeople raise their public profile in the public domain via the medium of the media. A specific narrative is defined based on comprehensive messaging and then this narrative is broadcast externally to a company’s stakeholders.

Digital communications, however, plays a slightly but distinctively different role. Digital Communications takes traditional communication strategies used in PR efforts and optimises them for digital platforms, meaning it serves as the perfect complement to a corporation’s PR strategy. The advantage of this is that if offers more direct communication with target audiences via digital platforms and allows you to track the effectiveness and ROI of these efforts more directly.

Curating PR and Digital Communication Strategy

One of the most important strategy meetings you can have with your PR team is the discovery session. Weather this is part of a new client onboarding or a quarterly alignment, this meeting will enable your PR team to understand your company’s brand identity, tone, image and target audience. This enables your PR to craft messaging that best represents your company in the public domain and most effectively resonate with your target audience. This will also best inform the media outlets to target and build relationships with. These discovery sessions will need to be ongoing to intermittently monitor and if necessary, refine your company messaging. 
​
As a digital communications component comes into play, having digital touchpoints that work alongside a PR campaign help to build audience criteria, aide in community engagement, conduct competitor research and bolsters content plans that encapsulate official messaging. This kind of content is also often multifaceted and can be repurposed for paid advertorial opportunities. 

Used in tandem, the objective of PR and digital communications is to nurture and build a brand or company’s corporate reputation across all possible touchpoints. PR is an effective way to build legitimacy and credibility by achieving coverage in target publications, getting in front of your target audience. From a digital perspective, getting your name in established online publication leverages that publication’s existing SEO component and even these site’s social media presence.

Once you zone out and view the bigger picture, it’s evident how PR and digital work in synergy to achieve an objective that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Monitoring and Reporting

The final piece of the puzzle is monitoring and reporting, a crucial component in any communications campaign.  Monitoring allows your PR team to track efforts against KPIs and objectives and to help define whether a course correction is in order. Some of the key metrics to be measured in reporting include engagement rates, click through rates, audience demographics and sentiment analysis. Through these monitoring and reporting efforts, a corporation or brand can better understand the true impact PR and digital communications play in shaping its wider success.