Online Public Relations

Online and offline public relations differ in their ways of pitching things but both try to do the same things. Online public relations involve activities that are geared towards influencing media, communities, and audiences that exist solely on the Internet using online channels. These things include search engines, blogs, news search, forums, discussion threads, social networks, and other online communication tools. Offline public relations deal with the same kinds of things just with print, radio, TV, conferences/events, and other “real life” venues.

The Internet provides valuable public relations opportunities that are now equal to or are even better then the standard marketing and public relations tools. There are many online public relations tools that we can use to try to spread the word about a product. Reaching the public can be beneficial because it allows us to connect directly with people with specific interests via internet newsgroups. One key to posting online in newsgroups is to try to soft sell your product. Making a blatant sales pitch will only get people to tune you out of the newsgroup very quickly. It is also important to try to share advice in your areas of expertise and always to include the name of your business and a link to your own site. Another valuable key is to return to the site often and post regularly to give you multiple exposures and it shows that there is a consistent presence on the site. A good idea when starting out blogging is to look at the blogs that other people have created in the corporate world. Even though there are many people that don’t want to hear what corporate people have to say, hundreds of thousands of others are tuning in. So even though blogging is easy to do and is being done by more than 8.5 million people today, there are public relations and legal hoops to jump through before executives can start writing about their ideas.