All About Telling the Story Right: Effective PR Strategies to Boost Engagement through Your Content

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- With the ever-changing media consumption habits of customers, marketers and PR professionals must constantly strategize their storytelling tactics to attract the attention of their targeted audiences among other information that is cluttering the digital world.

Recognizing the pressing need for engaging with target audiences, PR Newswire held its second Media Coffee event on October 20 in Kuala Lumpur with the theme "Effective Strategies to Boost Audience & Media Engagement through Your PR Content". The event attracted more than 50 corporate communications and marketing professionals to listen to the keynote presentations by Ivlynn Yap Cheng Theng, Managing Director at Citrine One, Zan Azlee, journalist and writer, and Eswari Kalugasalam Lawson, PR Director at Leo Burnett. They shared their experiences and insights on strategising content to engage target audiences and pitching to the media with relevant content that resonates with the target audience.

The archived video of the event is now available upon registration.

 
From left to right: Eswari Lawson, Ivlynn Yap, Zan Azlee and moderator Royce Shih.

Segment your audiences on various social platforms.

With the influx of publications that are feeding readers with new content on a daily basis, marketers need to know how to present content that stands out from the rest. Ivlynn Yap started off the event by providing an overview of the changing journalism and media landscape and some of her key points include:

• Media is not an extension of a PR department. It has its own way of reporting.
• Changing Media Landscape: from centralised control (government-owned) to citizen journalism which reports on human interest stories.
• Journalists today can be anyone who can share in-depth knowledge on specific matters on social media.
• Journalists have expanded their source base from the traditional media pitches, interviews and individual sources to online research and to pursuing stories that have gained attention on social media.

Be more personal.

As a former journalist and multimedia producer, Zan Azlee gave the six essential elements for creating a good communication campaign for the modern media: Storytelling, Characters, Relevance, Personal Connection, Social Media, and Multimedia. Some of his key points include:

• 80 to 85% of news releases are ignored at the news desks because of the lack of good storytelling.
• Digital media attracts 20 times more audiences than traditional media.
• Brands should show a more personal side of them such as sharing behind-the-scenes details of a marketing campaign or the daily routine of their successful CEOS.

Focus on your audience.

"It's not about what you want to tell your audience, it's about what they want to read," said Eswari Kalugasalam Lawson in her presentation. With 20 years of experience in the corporate communications and business development fields, Eswari advised that journalists were interested in content that matters to their audiences. Her key points include:

• PR is not advertising. Advertising is saying you are good, while Public Relations is getting someone else to say you are good.
• Three steps for successful storytelling --
  • Market Research: Understand market needs through surveys and data. Find out the working habits of today's journalists.
  • Core Audience: Target a specific group of audiences and stakeholders.
  • What do they want: Find out the type of content audiences want and choose the right ambassador to influence them.
• Do not underestimate the power of PR. Find the right story angle and choose the right platform to disseminate your story to the audience.

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About PR Newswire's Media Coffee

The goal of Media Coffee is to enable communications professionals to hear from leading media organizations on how their respective companies work, providing insight into their specialist areas, giving advice on achieving coverage and informing them on effective targeting of journalists within their sector and how to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

About PR Newswire  

PR Newswire, a Cision company, is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms and distribution that marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers leverage to engage key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry over 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- and then distribute and measure results. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire powers the stories of organizations around the world. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions.

Cision is a leading global media intelligence company, serving the complete workflow of today's communication professionals.

For further information, please contact:

PR Newswire's Asia Marketing Team
+852 2572 8228
asia.marketing@prnasia.com

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