The Inbound First PR Strategy: The Beauty From Within

Inbound is fast becom­ing a paradigm shift for PR.

As optim­ising web con­tent becomes increas­ingly essen­tial, inbound is becom­ing an intriguing oppor­tun­ity for mar­ket­ing and pub­lic rela­tions.

But when it comes to inbound, most PR pro­fes­sion­als think about land­ing pages, con­ver­sion rates, and Software-as-a-Service (like HubSpot, the lead­ing inbound software). 

However — inbound mar­ket­ing is also a PR strategy.

Here’s why:

The Inbound Mindset for PR

Inbound mar­ket­ing is a fun­da­ment­al shift for PR professionals. 

Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in pub­lic relations.

Instead of focus­ing on try­ing to spawn non-exist­ing audi­ences, PR can do so much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ¹Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

If your inbound PR strategy is good enough, you might not even need an out­bound PR strategy.

Read also: The Inbound First PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

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Drawing the Line Again

Drawing a line between those who know you and those who don’t know you is noth­ing new:

Too many organ­iz­a­tions con­sider inbound audi­ences as “already paid for” and thus do not need fur­ther atten­tion. Hence, most com­pan­ies instead pour their PR- and mar­ket­ing budgets into vari­ous out­bound activities.

“Why should we spend our PR- and mar­ket­ing budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”

This is a flawed PR approach:

In a wired world, not both­er­ing with your exist­ing com­munity won’t give you the long-term online suc­cess you seek.

Brands can­not afford to ignore their exist­ing brand com­munit­ies.

Affiliate: I use Email List Validation to pro­tect my sender repu­ta­tion by keep­ing my PR email lists free from boun­cing emails.

Inbound is Smarter PR

Many brands focus on land­ing pages for list build­ing, con­tent themes, call-to-actions, vir­al loops, con­ver­sion rates, lead mag­nets, con­tent upgrades, land­ing pages, a/​b‑testing, mar­ket­ing auto­ma­tion, email mar­ket­ing etc.

But inbound is more than just deploy­ing vari­ous tac­tics to cap­ture online leads.

Most com­pan­ies want more traffic, fans, emails, and sales. But in most cases, reach­ing new out­bound audi­ences isn’t the real problem: 

If your site isn’t grow­ing, what hap­pens if you com­pensate for that lack of engage­ment by pay­ing to 10x your traffic? Now you have 10x the num­ber of people who are not engaged — and your budget is spent. Doesn’t make much sense, right?

However, if you activ­ate and engage your exist­ing audi­ence, it won’t stay small for much longer. Because in a wired world, people influ­ence each oth­er. And people influ­ence algorithms.

And that’s the real PR power of inbound.

PR Resource: Deep Content

Deep Content

Above is an example of an online con­tent struc­ture that’s five levels deep.

In the example above, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked:

• Level 1: Articles
• Level 2: Content Upgrade
• Level 3: Resource/​Lead Magnet
• Level 4: Ebook
• Level 5: Online Course

Deep con­tent is centred around provid­ing increas­ingly high­er qual­ity to Content Divers since they’re more valu­able than Surface Dwellers.

As for the import­ance of struc­ture and depth, the logic is the same as for ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy: Win By Going Deeper

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PR Resource: Content Themes

Content Themes

Let’s use a fic­ti­tious example of an IT com­pany. First, they decide on a Promise Filter for their con­tent strategy:

Promise Filter: We make IT easy to understand.

Then, the IT com­pany breaks their core mes­sage down into four busi­ness-crit­ic­al Content Themes:

Q1 Content Theme: We make people under­stand the Internet of Things (IoT).

Q2 Content Theme: We make people under­stand busi­ness auto­ma­tion.

Q3 Content Theme: We make people under­stand cloud com­put­ing.

Q4 Content Theme: We make people under­stand man­aged services.

For each quarterly con­tent theme, they pro­duce Content Packages. Each con­tent pack­age could con­tain the following:

• Infographics
• Blog Articles
• Whitepapers
• Social Media Updates
• Landing Pages
• Lead Magnets
• Swipe Files
• Template Files
• Content Upgrades
• Online Courses
• Podcast Episodes
• Livestreams
• Email Send-Outs
• Events
• Case Studies
• Webinars
• Video Tutorials
• Interactive Quizzes
• Press Releases
• E‑Books
• Testimonials
• Influencer Collaborations
• Mobile Apps
• Slide Presentations

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

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PR Resource: Evergreen Content

Evergreen Content

What’s ever­green con­tent? For a piece of con­tent to be ever­green, it must sus­tain its value over time. Meaning: The con­tent must be rel­ev­ant today, tomor­row, and the fore­see­able future.

While news con­tent might have a more sig­ni­fic­ant impact short-term, ever­green con­tent instead accu­mu­lates over time.

There are dif­fer­ent ways to lever­age ever­green con­tent. I recom­mend a few axioms for ever­green content:

• Two years. To be con­sidered ever­green con­tent, I think the con­tent must be rel­ev­ant and valu­able for at least two years. It’s an arbit­rary time frame, but if an organ­isa­tion can pro­duce con­tent last­ing for two years, it will typ­ic­ally last for much longer.
• Actual interest. To be con­sidered ever­green con­tent, there must be an exist­ing volume of search engine users look­ing for the inform­a­tion. Without search volumes, the con­tent will likely be ‘ever’ without the ‘green’.
• Gentle garden­ing. Evergreen con­tent will only stay ever­green if you tend to it occa­sion­ally. To check if everything’s work­ing, add some­thing help­ful if needed, and per­haps clean out some unne­ces­sary stuff. It’s a bit like garden­ing, I find. 
• Personal touch. It’s dif­fi­cult to pub­lish some­thing unique. However, adding your brand’s ton­al­ity and flair to the con­tent is always pos­sible. The object­ive is to estab­lish trust and author­ity, so a touch of per­son­al­ity matters.

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time

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PR Resource: More PR Strategies