The best kind of PR effort stems from honesty. That means whatever a company decides to publish, it should start by making sure it is going to be true.

Being misleading or spreading disinformation through PR efforts doesn’t always work because most customers tend to be plugged into the digital space and can access a lot of truthful information with the press of a button. However, telling consumers the truth doesn’t equate to telling them everything.

That’s why companies in the e-commerce industry should dissect the information they have before they decide to respond to a comment or share any PR effort. Anything that’s not relevant to the target audience or the current time should be removed from PR efforts.

Audience

The target audience isn’t necessarily interested in the brand, the news, or the company. They’re most interested in how they can benefit from making a purchase from a business.

That means whenever a company is thinking about generating news around its solutions, it should start by thinking about what the target audience can gain from that news.

To do that, companies should create an outline of their announcements, and then try replacing the company’s name with someone else’s. That name can be a brand that’s not popular with consumers, a competitors’ name, or a household name.

This is a great way to figure out how a piece of news will make the company feel, and whether consumers will care about what the business is trying to communicate with the audience. If a news article sounds boring, the company should try starting over this process and figuring out how the target audience can benefit from the news article by talking about others instead of the business itself.

For example, instead of simply announcing the company’s anniversary with a list of all of its achievements in a bulleted list, it should reflect on how supportive its target audience has been in the company’s business operations, and acknowledge them in that celebratory achievement.

Newsworthy Content

Journalists are always looking for new information that’s exciting and easily accessible. When a company can provide journalists with high-quality content that’s targeted specifically to their outlets’ audiences, it’s going to benefit that company a lot more.

To ensure that any content a company creates has a clear and digestible message, it should follow the 5Ws.

Those 5Ws include what the story is going to be about, who is involved in the story, when and where that story happens, and why the audience should care about the story. As long as the PR content is ready to use by journalists, it will be a lot more likely to be picked up by outlets and have a long lifespan with audiences.

PR Opportunities

A piece of news that a company wants to share can be of interest to different groups of people in the target audience, but the message for each segment has to appear like it was specifically made for them.

Anything can provide a positive PR opportunity for a company, as long as the right medium, angle, and channel are chosen well ahead of time. The right medium largely depends on the angle and the channel that the company chooses, as well as the content type that’s going to be created.

There are three types of channels that companies can use to spread their PR efforts, including owned, paid, and earned channels. Lastly, the angle of a company’s content is the theme of the message inside the content, or the perspective the business is using to filter the information it’s sharing.

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Ronn Torossian is the Founder & Chairman of 5W Public Relations, one of the largest independently-owned PR firms in the United States. With over 20 years of experience crafting and executing powerful narratives, Torossian is one of America’s most prolific and well-respected Public Relations professionals.