What exactly is the difference between Online PR, Link Development and Social Media?

You may have seen or possibly heard of the latest ‘band wagon’s’ touring the Internet industry circuit, Social Media, Link Development (or link building) and Online PR. If they were music bands you could be forgiven for thinking that the music they play all sounds the same...and this won’t be anything to do with you getting older! If we take the analogy further, the way we would position this is thus; Online PR is headlining at the Social Media festival and they’re being supported by Link Development. Sounds like a good event, but what does that actually mean for your next campaign?

Deciphering buzzwords and phrases

Within many online organisations at the moment the discussions are full of buzzwords and phrases that all focus on how to incorporate social media in to the customer acquisition strategy. Whilst well intended, our assumption is that many of the ideas look something like “let’s set up a group on Facebook” or “let’s create a widget” or even better “let’s create a blog on our site”. Do any of these sound familiar? All of these and many more are valid ways of extending your reach to your customer. However, excitedly setting up various types of social media and then wondering how they can be used by your organisation is absolutely the wrong way to approach it.

The social media trick

Here’s what we think. Online PR is the term used for placing valuable content in front of your target audience. Ensuring it is optimised and has the necessary links embedded within it is link development. Note: link development does not include a submission to a link directory as this method is increasingly being frowned upon in some areas by the search engines. The use of social media then encompasses all the ways to deploy your Online PR. The trick is then knowing what social media methods to choose. The starting point is of course your target audience. Where do they spend their time on the Internet? Who do they look to for likeminded advice and influence? If you can establish the online “networks” of the various groups within your target audience then you can then begin to decide how best to interact with them using social media. Placing valuable, interesting and informative content in front of them will enhance visibility outside of your website. When the article, posting or comment is written correctly with the necessary links in place the piece will directly attract them to your site. The second and highly valuable benefit of this practice being that the search engines will see this content and rank your site higher due to the high quality in bound links to your site.

Content is still king

What is clear about this simple set of guidelines is that the old ‘content is king’ adage still remains as relevant today as it ever did – and that’s why we believe it’s the right approach. As always, if you’d like further information around this subject please get in touch. We’ve added a simple list of tips in Client Corner to help you. We’ve just heard that the Social Media festival is now sold out...not to worry though we’ve just secured a number of tickets for Paul Weller, which will be much more entertaining.