Why Brands, Agencies Should Leverage Digital Tools To Achieve Visibility, Credibility 

For brands and Public Relations agencies to control online narratives, achieve reputation management, visibility, and credibility, there is an urgent need to embrace digital tools.

Digital marketing communications professional, Dotun Babatunde stated this while making a presentation on Digital Public Relations at a virtual Nigeria Public Relations Week Pre-conference Learning Series held on Tuesday.

The Public Relations Week with the theme, “Leveraging Public Relations as a Critical Asset for Nigeria’s Economy and Reputation Renaissance” is scheduled for Monday, 22nd to Friday 28th April 2024 at the June 12 Cultural Centre, Abeokuta, Ogun State.

The President of the institute, Dr. Ike Neliakwu, while giving his welcome address at the Pre-conference Learning Series disclosed that the virtual summit is a precursor to NIPR Week.

Dissecting the topic, the Head of Digital Marketing at Olam Nigeria Limited, drew a line between traditional and digital PR, stressing how technology is revolutionizing the industry and why practitioners must strive to catch up with the trend.

According to him, while PR has been around for a while and as old as communications, digital PR has changed a lot of things through the use of digital tools by the agencies that have embraced the shift.

“The essence is to improve sales, visibility, awareness and credibility of the brands. It is like doing the same thing as traditional PR but with different technology. These days, human attention has become a scarce commodity. As a brand, you must constantly be online to control the narrative .” He explained.

Also speaking on the efficacy of digital over the traditional PR, the multi-disciplined creative, disclosed that the latter makes use of broadcast media, press conference and press release to control the narrative which have become ineffective and outdated  in crisis resolution. This is unlike the former that deals with the crisis from where it started and leverages various digital tools to control the narratives.

“There is a need to have a presence on various social media platforms and also understand the challenges that come with it. While traditional PR has come to stay, there must be constant switch between it and digital platforms. Social media helps to know more about brands, personalities and politicians unlike traditional media,” he stated. 

Also discussing the roles of digital PR, Babatunde highlighted five key points which include perception management, crisis management, community engagement, influencer outreach, market intelligence and link building for SEO.

According to him, perception management is a strategic communication process that involves shaping and influencing public perception about brands and its information to achieve a specific goal. 

He explained crisis management as the application of strategies designed to help brands deal with a sudden and significant negative occurrence while maintaining business continuity.

For community engagement,  the PR mogul hinted that it requires intentional interactions between communities and public decision makers while influencer outreach is the process of finding and contacting social media influencers for  brand promotion.

On market intelligence, Babatunde simply put it as the information or data that is derived by an organization from the market while Link building for SEO is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to brands websites.

Concluding his presentation, Babatunde advised digital PR professionals to be  constantly proactive by monitoring what is happening online.