Did you take my 2019 survey to determine how SEO-savvy public relations professionals are, and if their professional priorities align with brand priorities? Keep reading. The results are in.
These charts and comments are a slider; swipe or tap the bottom buttons to move through them.
For most of us, 2018 was a tough year.
Facebook engagement on our brand pages hit an all-time low, and the lift social sharing used to give our content evaporated into a pay-for-play environment…. but the ability to target the right audience became more effective than ever before.
Ridiculous volumes of content made the competition for reach INCREDIBLY challenging… but it taught us the difference between quantity versus quality.
The effectiveness of earned media dropped… pushing us to adopt stronger skills for conversion and smarter call-to-action tactics.
Creating brands that are authentic continued to remain a major challenge for many… yet we’ve seen the effectiveness of influencer marketing equalize with brand marketing, according to an article I came across yesterday. Our audiences trust the content we are publishing as much as they trust an influencer touting our message, so we’re clearly doing something right. Trust in our content is growing and trust for sponsored messaging is declining.
We’re all becoming more sophisticated.
Perhaps the most impressive change is this: PR professionals are taking ownership of learning the skills they need to be effective and competitive. They’ve realized just how critical it is, and owning it.
Do PR pro and brand priorities align?
Some of you might have seen the survey that I ran in December, exploring attitudes of our peers around digital and search engine optimization.
As content creators, I wanted to substantiate or disprove a Hubspot® statistic that I came across in their 2018 State of Inbound report, and make that statistic relevant to PR professionals.
The report stated that growing SEO/organic presence is the biggest marketing priority for brands in the upcoming year.
Do our own professional priorities match that of the brands we’re publicizing?
Here’s what I found out.
We’re building awareness and reputation, with almost 85% of us completely comfortable learning new digital skills. Is search engine optimization a priority for PR pros in 2019? The overwhelming answer was YES.
Not only is it a priority, but we’re willing to step in to learn how it should be integrated into our content, and admitting it’s a shortfall for most of us need to grow. We create content and need to learn how to make the most of it. We want that content to be as successful as possible, knowing that is a key part of our job and SEO is one tool to make that happen.
We’re also comfortable learning digital.
An impressive 74% have made it a major priority to learn or expand their skills for search this year.
I’m thrilled and clients should be, too.
The survey wasn’t just revealing in the comparison charts it created. The comments were insightful, too. Let’s take a look.
Should we be responsible for learning how to integrate basic SEO into the content we create?
One of the most interesting questions asked in the survey was this: should PR professionals be responsible for learning how to integrate basic SEO into the content they create?
Overwhelmingly, the responses were positive, with just two percent of the survey participants commenting that SEO should not be a responsibility of the public relations professional. Interesting, right?
So that’s the survey. Let me know if you find it useful! I welcome your comments and insight.
If you’re a public relations professional interested in growing your own digital skills in a comfortable learning environment, be sure to join my brand new Facebook group. Just click or tap on the image below! You’ll need to provide your LinkedIn profile or another way I can verify you are in PR, but otherwise… you’re in!
