Digital Public Relations (DPR)
Digital Public Relations (DPR) is the use of digital and social technologies to manage the awareness and understanding, reputation and brand of a company or organisation, through the purposeful influence of exposure via digital media.
Okay, so Digital Public Relations will use many of the typical digital marketing media in order to manage its reputation convincingly; again tools such as content marketing, permission marketing, and customer engagement are central to the public relations purpose. Tools will also be typical and will include social media approaches, blogs, websites as well as traditional media such as newspapers, television and magazines. So one of the key tools of digital public relations is the media release or press release.
Using the digital media, examples of digital public relations techniques will include;
• online speeches
• corporate videos and information about the business such as financial reports
• interviews with senior executives will be recorded and publicised
• events which are broadcast, for example videoconferencing or even using Second Life
• sponsorship and charitable donations which again generate content on news websites or charitable donations via a number of giving websites, for example Cancer Research
• facility visits by the public could be virtual, or visits by the general public might be recorded using Instagram or video, which might be uploaded to YouTube
• publicity events and stunts will also generate user generated content which could be shared using social media, or again media releases will also generate some coverage if picked up by online and off-line sources
• product placement in games or in movies, will also generate public relations material
• if you scour websites or Youtube you will easily find examples of video advertorials which promote products using video, generated by the provider of the good or service.
• Websites and electronic brochures are also obvious but crucial digital public relations tools.
• Lobbying is a controversial digital public relations method; essentially it means that parliamentarians or politicians are lobbied by individuals or companies in order that political perspective is noticed. The National Rifle Association in the United States will use lobbying techniques to persuade politicians of the need for guns, for example. Electronic approaches such as Facebook pages, customer surveys and polls, websites and a plethora of other digital marketing approaches are employed for the purpose of digital lobbying.
