Online Marketing and PR

In addition to online marketing, businesses seeking to thrive in an online world should understand and utilize the internet for public relations. Online marketers need to realize the strong role PR can play in brand-building, influencing stakeholders, and damage control.

So what is the difference between online marketing in general and PR?

While both overlap in many ways, a key difference between marketing in general and PR is that marketing is used to ultimately lead to an increase in profit, while PR is mainly used for branding.

Furthermore, public relations on the internet is very different from traditional PR.

For one, it is more interactive. The company doesn’t need traditional media for releasing information, so it no longer has to depend on a middle-man to spread a message and can just release it on its website. Businesses can also use social-networks like Facebook to rapidly respond to any given event. This gives them the ability to mitigate any damage before it spreads, or blow something out of proportion if it hurts their competitors.  

Twitter can also help with brand-building, since tweets can be made to sound personal. Many CEOs from corporations, like Richard Branson from Virgin Mobile, create their own personal Twitter account for the public and use it for branding and giving their consumers the illusion of intimacy.   

The interactivity of the internet also allows companies to find out how the public might perceive them quickly and easily through the use of search engines. Quick feedback from the public would make it easier for a business to change what doesn't work with consumers  into something that does.