5 ways PR increases your credibility and brand profile

PR, to increase your credibility and brand profile, is essential. No one remembers you if they have no relationship with you. The aim of PR is to build understanding between you and your various publics; investors, customers, users (they’re not always the same thing) and your wider industry. 

It is these relationships that make your brand recognisable and salient against your competitors. PR is thus vital to your brand recognition and achieves this in 5 ways.

A reality in your market

If people don’t talk about you, you don’t exist. If they don’t have opinions of their user experience, customer experience, the value you offer, then your brand might as well not be there. 

The engagement you create via PR is thus crucial to your publics’ knowing that not only do you exist, but you are also an excellent choice in a field of competitors. How do you do this via PR? 

By social media conversations and engagement with all the communities, you need to engage with. Those engagements make you reality in the market and a brand worth trying or seeking out for those in search of services like yours.

Comment and quotability

Journalists write about trends and developments in business every day. While they have the broad brush of what is going on in the news, they cannot write real stories with real illustrations without connecting with the people that are making the news. 

That’s where your opinions, quotes and comments come in. They liven up a story and make it real. When you send quotes and comments, in response say to Journo requests, you help Journalists. They publish them and other Journalists start to take notice of your knowledge and experience in your sector. 

PR is the discipline that markets such quotes and comments to keep the news agenda lively. It is why our most valued tool on JournoLink is our Media Request feature that sends our users requests to be quoted by bloggers, broadcasters, and journalists on all media. 

It is also why no Press Release is complete without usable quotes either about your brand or from your brand.

Subject matter expertise

Comments and quotes nail down a brand’s credentials in subject matter expertise. Many entrepreneurs understate their knowledge and experience. The truth is if they’re running a business they’ve got experience which attests to their ability to survive and grow. 

Such experience at the root is what expertise is about. You know where the bodies are buried in your sector and through PR you share these experiences, underscoring your subject matter expertise. This is how thought leaders are created. The more you share your knowledge and expertise the more your brand and your reputation as a thought leader becomes established. 

That’s the path to becoming a spokesperson for your area of business, and the first beneficiaries are your reputation and the profile of your brand.

Predicting trends

Journalists are in the business of being read, not ignored. They want to share insights that are unique and enlightening to their readers and nothing is more compelling than a statement of which way the wind is blowing in your sector. What are the challenges today and their solutions, and what do you anticipate for the future based on your experience? 

Journalists love such trend gazing stories and they can’t write them without your experience. This is where PR again helps you establish your brand profile and the company reputation as a leader in its field.

Relationships

Relationships are in the very DNA of PR. Your relationship to the news, to journalists, to media, to customers, to users, and the wider public. Your PR is what creates those relationships. 

An understanding of your mission, value proposition and proof of success via stories of wins inspires readers and the industry. This cannot be achieved by advertising, only by ongoing relationships with your various publics. And should a catastrophe occur, the goodwill that’s made your brand salient will be the only asset you can count on. 

If the goodwill built on good relationships via PR is shaky it can hit the company hard as United Airlines discovered following an $800m drop in its share price, before the CEO apologised via a PR blitz for his company’s treatment of a passenger.

PR is not an optional extra. It is key to building and maintaining the relationships that keep your brand up there in lights, your reputation strong, and your resulting sales buoyant in good and bad times. PR is the best option to increase your credibility and brand profile.

Written by: Tetteh Kofi, Brand Ambassador for JournoLink