Our interactions with brands happen increasingly in a digital environment. For brands, this requires some degree of adaptability. As remote work (or working from home, home-office, however you are calling it) takes hold, we’ve compiled a few tips to navigate remote PR.

Adapt your processes and revisit your workflow

Most companies have developed working from home policies and adapted the way they work, even added some rituals so the team can stay connected and have some fun from afar. If like us, you've been doing this for a few months now, perhaps you have picked up new habits and got rid of a few others, you might be on a slightly different schedule or blocking time to remember to go on a walk.

Whatever your team's setup is, now is a good time to take a look at how you’ve been working and whether that still makes sense. If there are certain tasks that take longer than they used to, and your team shows signs of discontent towards your current processes to the point it affects their work, perhaps it’s time to revise it. 

Map out your current processes and identify everybody’s pain points. There are plenty of ways to go about this – one of the easiest is to identify parts of your workflow that you’re happy with and you’d like to keep, ones that you feel like they could be improved and, lastly, those you’d rather get rid of. You can use a voting/points system to prioritize a list of improvements and think about it as continuous improvement. This will also get your team used to change and ensure you stay flexible.

Learn more about setting up a PR plan, making strategic decisions and how to keep your activities organized.

Revise your targets

For many companies, an increase in digital activity – boosted by teams transitioning to remote working – represents tons of opportunities to grow, some don’t even have to justify their value and can go ahead and take a business-as-usual approach or get by without undergoing major changes. However, this isn’t the case for everybody, and it’s likely that companies relying heavily on activities that haven’t been fully digitized yet need to adjust their messaging, strengthen their value proposition and revise their targets accordingly. 

This is easier to do for some PR activities than it is for others – think about your events strategy, for example. You wouldn’t measure the success of a webinar the same way you would for a breakfast session. Other metrics like website visitors, SEO value, or mentions still make sense to track, but you’ll need a new benchmark. Start establishing it, turn to your company’s goals if you ever miss some focus – it also helps to look at your competition and neighboring sectors.

Related: The Essentials of PR measurement.

Get the right tools

Tools are there to make our jobs easier. Internal communications, project management, time management, and video-conferencing are a few clear examples of activities where software comes in handy if you’re working remotely. 

Tools tailored to PR professionals are no exception (especially if you’re trying to do PR remotely). If you're using PressPage, for instance, you can work on each step of your workflow in the same environment: create, publish, and distribute your stories; keep your media contacts organized; track interactions with your audiences so you can measure progress toward your goals.

Leave room for experimentation

This goes hand-in-hand with being adaptable. Experiments don’t have to be large scale projects, and every little improvement in your workflow might be an opportunity to run a small experiment. 

For example, if you have a newsroom and you wanted to increase traffic from your there to your website, there are concrete, small ways of doing it – from adding hyperlinks in your articles and releases, to working on the consistency of your newsroom’s branding.

While teams work remotely, companies are confronted with the challenge of keeping interactions human and genuine. The shift isn’t particularly easy if you’re not used to it, but with the right processes and tools in place, it is possible to achieve a smooth transition. For PR professionals, understanding the digital landscape and the differences between face-to-face and online interactions is key to build lasting relationships. At the end of the day, that’s still what PR is all about.

Like most companies right now, our main priorities are the safety of our staff and the needs of our customers, making sure we’re helping them navigate their day-to-day during these times. We recognize the importance of clear, reliable and up-to-date information. This is even more crucial for key sectors like healthcare or government which need to provide regular updates to the public. Communications professionals working in these sectors are busy pushing out updates on-the-go. Their function is crucial to keep us informed and encourages us to take the necessary steps to stay safe and, at the same time, protect vulnerable groups of society.

PressPage for government and medical care organizations

We’ve been pleased to see that our product offering helps some of our customers streamline their communications around COVID-19. We are also aware of the financial strain that this situation is putting in many budgets across the globe, and that, for many teams, sometimes this means making difficult choices. Therefore, PressPage is opening up the use of our platform to a number of organizations that work within key sectors and have an urgent need to set up a media center that lets them publish and distribute quick and consistent updates. 

We trust that newsrooms can be great tools for organizations and their PR teams in moments like these, helping them organize their communications and stay focused on their priorities by: 

Keeping a centralized repository or log of your content (which can come in handy for your team and external audiences alike when you need to produce constant updates). 

Organizing your content according to your audiences, if needed. 

Allowing journalists and other stakeholders to consult this information any time they might need it (you can add visual content, attach more information for context, and make it all accessible and easy to find). 

Measuring and monitoring the results of your work. Working at a fast-paced rhythm, it’s especially important to have quick access to data about your content’s performance so you know what works and where you need to focus on improving. 

If you work for a medical center or a government organization and are interested to set up a newsroom, you can find more information about this offer and apply for it here. 

We’re committed to facilitating great PR and will continue to support our existing customer base as we’ve been doing until now. We’re also looking forward to collaborating with those of you who have a key role to fulfill as we hope for better times. 

Yet, many newsrooms haven’t tapped into it – press releases uploaded as PDFs, infrequent updates or static content are some of the holdbacks for PR teams when it comes to their newsrooms. Most often than not, PR professionals have limited time and perhaps too many priorities; it’s crucial that the newsroom works in an agile way, fits your brand, and works simply and effectively for the team. 

Here are a few of the challenges we’ve noticed PR professionals have to deal with:

Messy publication processes

Many PR teams operate something like this: a list of media contacts is kept in an old Excel file, press releases are written in Word, there’s a folder somewhere on the server with the company’s logos and brand images, and impact is measured through Google Analytics. Different tools are used to post to the website and to communicate by email, and the two systems don’t talk to each other.

In short, it’s a mess. 

It’s inefficient, time-consuming and frustrating for all involved – and it increases the possibility that mistakes will be made somewhere along the way. A multitude of tools is required for what could be a simple, straightforward process.

*Enter PR software*

Having a dedicated PR tool that integrates into your website hands control back to PR Managers. With complete autonomy over your newsroom, you’re able to respond quickly to breaking news at the company, which could prove crucial during major announcements or times of crisis.

Leaving SEO to Marketing

Traditionally, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) falls under the role of marketers, but as more and more people turn to “googling” to find products and information, a holistic approach to SEO is more crucial than ever. 

In some cases, the two departments might work in silos; in others, PR professionals may be too focused on building and keeping relationships with journalists and other stakeholders to think about different (but also valuable) audiences that get to their content through browser searches. Basic SEO knowledge can get you a long way in the optimization of content and design elements of your newsroom or corporate blog, helping secure earned media. 

When looking into getting started with SEO for PR, consider the following: 

• Develop a list of keywords for each content piece. It’s common practice to use them in the title and a few times across the piece. 

• Think about where people read the content, is your newsroom optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop users alike? 

• Social media plugins help people who like your content to share it with their networks and improve your page’s presence. 

• Get comfortable with rich content. Blockquotes, good quality photos, videos, and infographics will be essential to get a higher search ranking.

Looking for an in-depth guide to getting started with SEO? Download our free ebook on the role of SEO in PR.

Old content and poor user experience

We’ve all been frustrated by outdated content, broken hyperlinks, impossible navigation, and text-heavy websites. Make it easy for people visiting your newsroom to find the information they need (this means no 404s, working links, clear navigation and easy to digest content). Keeping the user experience smooth will help to keep them engaged with your content. 

If you go through a brand refresh, for example, you may need to change the logos on your releases, update the imagery to reflect new guidelines or update links to a new format so that they still work. Likewise, imagine your PR Manager is going on maternity leave for a year. Every press release you’ve issued for the last three years has her name, email and phone number attached. Anyone who contacts her during that period will get an auto-reply to their email – not the best first impression for journalists trying to contact your company.

Read: How to successfully manage a global newsroom

In short...

A central spot with features specifically designed for PR teams is bound to be a welcome change for overworked PR teams who desperately need a simple workflow to get their carefully-honed messages out into the world. By allowing you to create, implement and monitor your campaigns in one platform, you can save time and energy and focus it all on winning earned media. Centralizing your PR workflow in one platform means that PR departments can focus on what they do best: improving your organization’s reputation and brand.