As a marketer, are you frustrated by your team producing great blog content but not being able to drive views and engagement? You are not alone – a research study tracks a million articles and results show that 50 percent receive 8 social media shares or fewer and 75 percent achieved zero referring domain links. So how do marketers boost their blog traffic without paying for the “sugar rush” of paid traffic that is unsustainable over the longer-run?

To boost organic traffic, your content must be more relevant and deliver value to your readers so that these blog posts show up in search engine results when they do a keyword search. This is critical as there are over 5 million blog posts written each day. Our own experience, shared by 52 percent of B2B marketers, is that using a calendar to plan content is an effective way to produce relevant, consistent and valuable material. Content calendars help allocate resources, keep content ‘on brand’ and generate new ideas while reducing the stress levels of the content marketing team.

Content calendars also play a critical role in optimizing press coverage opportunities: A resounding 65 percent of journalists admitted that audience metrics, such as views and engagement, had changed the way they evaluate potential stories. This means that journalists are more likely to republish your carefully crafted content or use it as a source for their stories if it relates to an ongoing festival or big exhibition that attracts views and shares. This boosts your company’s SEO as media and publishing websites have the highest average domain authority, with a study showing that technology companies with more than five media placements per month earn a 29 percent higher share of traffic from search engines.

Ranking higher on SERP

According to Advanced Web Ranking, the top positions on Google’s search engine result pages (SERP) account for more than 50 percent of clicks. So, in addition to following a calendar, marketers also need to deliver content which will appear higher on Google’s SERP or they risk wasting their valuable time and effort writing material which few will read. However, ranking high on Google, which services over 90 percent of searches globally, isn’t easy.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become quite complicated over the years and recent updates by Google mean that many techniques which used to work are no longer effective. To find the most up-to-date SEO techniques which work, marketers should always consult Google itself. The company’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide provides many tips for improving rank, but there is one which stands out for content marketers.  In the Best Practices section, Google tells marketers to avoid ‘rehashing’ existing content and instead ‘create fresh, unique content’ to earn a higher rank on Google’s SERP.

What is a PR calendar?

For those who are new to this concept, a public relations (PR) calendar is a collection of important dates for a particular market such as public holidays, memorial days and even industry conferences.

Marketers can build their own PR calendar by thoroughly researching a target market, or they can adapt an existing one. One example for marketers in the Asia region is PR Newswire’s PR calendar. This calendar contains the dates for a wide range of holidays and events which have been curated for an Asian audience – and it can form the basis for a new, tailored ‘PR-powered’ content calendar to produce ‘fresh, unique content’ that is in line with Google’s SEO guidelines.

Creating a tailored PR calendar

Even a quick glance of a PR calendar reveals that there are events happening somewhere in Asia almost every day of the month. Marketers, therefore, shouldn’t aim to link their content with every event on a PR calendar. Instead, they should ‘tailor’ the PR calendar and only use the events which are relevant to their brand and, more importantly, their audience.

To start, marketers should first become familiar with the types of events recorded on PR calendars. These include:

• Public holidays
• International days, promoted by organizations to draw attention to their causes
• Memorial days
• Festivals – both commercial and public
• Conferences

Then, marketers should gauge the potential impact of each event on their customers’ searches. When evaluating company-specific content for these events, key reference points may include the volume of searches of targeted keywords and tracking competitor activity for targeted keywords. Public holidays are probably the most likely to be searched, but they will also have the most competition and be difficult to rank for. Festivals, conferences and international days may have lower search volumes but could be popular with a market segment.

Finally, marketers should assess which events tie in well with their brand and focus their efforts on them. Many B2C brands are likely to do well with widely known, public holidays especially when people are searching for a seasonal gift. B2B brands, on the other hand, may wish to focus on conferences, festivals and, events which are relevant to their industry. In particular, B2B brands may monitor and shortlist trending topics after a flagship event in their industry. These topics may then be featured in content for upcoming events in these brands’ PR calendar. And international days could be used by any brand as the basis of content to link the brand with a cause its company supports.

Combining PR and content at Microsoft Asia

In 2014, Microsoft Asia launched the Microsoft Asia News Center and transformed its PR into a newsroom model, integrating its PR outreach, including earned media coverage, with content in its owned media.

The regional headquarters now delivers content through several different micro-sites:

• Microsoft Asia News Center
• Microsoft Asia Blog
• Topic-specific sites such as Education Asia 

Through these sites, Microsoft leverages a PR calendar and infuses its own content in a variety of tailored events:

Type of event	Description & Relevance	Screenshots and Images
Conferences	Shares how developers may leverage technologies showcased at Microsoft Build 2019, its annual developer conference, to create intelligent solutions.
International days	Highlight on Global Accessibility Awareness Day how Microsoft’s Seeing AI project is assisting people who are blind.
Regional holidays	In the spirit of Ramadan, an important local festival, Microsoft Malaysia recently distributed Buka Puasa and Hari Raya goodies to the Kuala Lumpur Traffic Police.

Microsoft Asia adopted a PR/content model where its content production model combines PR with content marketing while amplifying reach with press releases for signature events such as Microsoft Build. This combination has allowed Microsoft to progressively reach and engage a much larger audience. In 2017, three years after launching the newsroom model, WARC reports that Microsoft Asia sites had doubled its 2016 results, with its sites receiving more than 580,000 page views and 440,000 unique visitors.

Delivering value to readers

A tailored PR calendar will ensure no surprises so that you won’t be scrabbling around at last minute to get content together for a certain festival. You will also be better prepared for big industry events. And you will have the lead-time to optimize your content and its engagement, making your PR and SEO efforts much more effective.

Always ensure, though, that the PR calendar-infused content that you create is delivering value for your readers. There is little point in aiming to improve your SEO with fresh content, only to be penalized by Google for delivering poorly-written content. Do get in touch with us at hkcs@prnasia.com if you have any questions or comments about how integrating a PR calendar into your content plan improves SEO and drives more traffic to your site!

About the Writer

Jeff Rajeck is a researcher, writer, trainer, and consultant for Econsultancy and Click Academy in Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore.  With a background in finance and analytics, Jeff is a regular contributor to the Econsultancy blog and frequently provides consulting services for Asia’s largest brands on marketing trends, best practices, and analytics.