HONG KONG, July 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Communications professionals always want to own a piece of right content. However, what kind of content can actually demand attention? At the Best Practices Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Ninan Chacko, global chief executive officer of PR Newswire talked about multimedia trends over the last few years and shared his insights on how to leverage upon the power of multimedia in storytelling. An archived video of the event is available here upon registration.
In the digital world, consumers are able to reach a ton of information before reaching the first point of purchase -- "first moment of truth".
"Consumers are taking advantage of all digital information available online to make themselves the better-educated customers," said Chacko. He further explained that the goal of an organization, a PR professional or an agency is really to create content that demands attention that is not only visually arresting, but more importantly also helpful and relevant to the buying audiences.
The epitome of this strategy can be summarized as follows:
Right content -- create visually arresting contents that are helpful and relevant to the audience.
Right time -- provide a consistent push of fresh content at the right moment.
Right place -- deliver content to all types of media including traditional media, online media, blogs, social media, etc.
Creating the Visual Moment of Truth
In order to stand out from the crowd, including multimedia elements in content can effectively help audiences understand and engage with the message. Chacko discussed the power of multimedia, including the following highlights:
Multimedia grabs attention. The engagement and number of time that an audience views the content will get increasingly higher when adding different multimedia elements (photos, videos, logos, and others). It turns to a loud and clear call to action.
Multimedia simplifies complex ideas. Visuals help to tell and provide helpful and relevant information to help the audience understand the stories.
Multimedia conveys emotion. Emotional connection that is underpinned by knowing the audience.
Multimedia is more often shared in social media. Effective use of multimedia in visual storytelling results in viral sharing.
Telling a Cohesive Brand Story
According to Forrester , 85% of brand marketers are publishing content, but only 36% are doing it effectively. Chacko highlighted some effective ways to best share the content to a broader audience with the following:
Organize content in an asset management system -- a digital cupboard where communications professionals can well utilize and put all the assets (photos, videos, infographs, and others) in one place to share with different aspects in the organization.
Create an editorial calendar -- align the publishing of the content and ensure to send out a steady stream of fresh content to reach more audiences.
Communication professionals have to ensure their contents are viewable on different electronic devices in order to provide consistency of message in communicating to the audience.
Distribution vs. Owned Media
In general, most companies post content to owned media or their company website, which only reaches to their existing audience. To grow more known audience, Chacko talked about how distribution can increase awareness and discoverability. Salient points include the following:
Content is sent as broadly based as possible to reach the widest number of audiences.
Distributing through PR Newswire drives several types of outcomes:
Deliver to major media channels
Display on major websites, for instance, Yahoo!, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, among others
Boost organic visibility and gain better search result
The role of distribution is to help drive a greater level of amplification and visibility ultimately in a piece of content.
Delivering multimedia assets (photos, infographics, videos and others) not only captures journalists' attention, but also helps them to quickly understand the message of a story and provide a perspective to write their own articles.
About Best Practices Forum:
PR Newswire Best Practices Forum provides a unique discussion platform for business communicators to gather and discuss latest best practices on topics related to online influence, content PR & marketing, multimedia engagement, and the media landscape that are relevant to audiences in Asia. Speakers will share global and local case studies, and attendees will meet like-minded peers.
About PR Newswire
PR Newswire (http://www.prnasia.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.
Source： PR Newswire
