Homeland-Embassy Marketing Strategy: Website Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing

When you implement a homeland-embassy digital marketing strategy, your website is the homeland, and your social media accounts are your embassies.

Your social media presence extends your reach and builds influence.

But there’s no where like your own website to convert awareness into measurable transactions through content creative.

The website is the single, most credible source for conveying company news, according to a survey of 1200 journalists by PR Week and PR Newswire. 

The only source considered more credible then an organization’s own website is a third-party newswire service.

But your website – or online newsroom if you're in public relations – is the centerpiece of your external communications efforts, how do you get the right people to notice the news, photos, and videos you’re posting?

Search engines are the number one way people source opinions on products, brands and services, according to Tom Smith’s report “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers.” 

But what can you do to accelerate getting your news in front of the people you’ve been previously informing through other channels?

That’s where email newsletters come in.  According to Tom’s study, 99% of internet users communicate via email, outstripping every other online channel from an adoption standpoint.  And those same people cite emails from a friend or colleague as the number two most common way they source opinions on products, brands, and services.

So, in terms of importance, your website, search engine optimization, and email marketing are the first, second, and third channels more organizations looking to improve their website marketing should be focusing on.

So while Twitter, Facebook and social media releases get the PR digerati’s attention  — and I am *very* excited about these channels too – I would argue that the research and adoption rates clearly show:

1. Online newsrooms
2. Email marketing
3. Search engine optimization

…are far more important starting points for public relations and corporate communications professionals looking to get their arms around online organizational communications.

You need an online newsroom you can manage content yourself because if you’re still relying on the web team down the hall, you are marginalizing your future, and your department’s future.

You need an easy way to search engine optimize your content marketing efforts.  And you need a way to send out email newsletters to your house list as a way of building awareness for your online publishing efforts.

Photo By: Pop of Photo