Five questions you need ask yourself before running your next digital PR campaign

Whenever I have a new idea for a campaign that I’d like to run with my clients I go through a small list to ensure it’s worth investing time into the project – and then I can be confident that it will deliver the results.

When it comes to idea generation, some people find it easy and love it, some people find it quite difficult – but it should be this way. Can you image all of us were creative and none of us were those who bring the creative ones back to earth?

I love coming up with ideas, but I sometimes get too excited, and for that reason, I’ve created this ‘reality check’ list.

Always ask – So What

It starts with ‘So What’. Whatever idea for a content piece you have, you need to ask yourself ‘so what’, if you can’t answer it – don’t do it. Meaning, you want to, for example, do a campaign focusing on how to prepare your car for winter. Forget, for a minute, the fact that it’s done by many, many companies every year. You ask yourself ‘so what’. It’s not unique, it’s not new – it’s not really something you should do.

Relevance

An important question you need to ask yourself is whether the content you are creating is relevant to your brand. Why? Well, if it’s not relevant to your brand and you send it out to the press, they’ll ask why you created it, they’ll quickly realise that it’s not relevant to you and won’t publish your content.

Timing

Is it a good time to do such content, is there any relevant event going on (whether that’s Christmas or national dog day), what’s going on in the news? – Make sure you’re not too late, or too early and that you know what’s happening at the moment and what the press is talking about and will be talking about in near future!

 

News

It can’t be new if some other company has done a similar campaign a month ago! Make sure you watch the news – when you get your idea, check what’s been done, while producing your content piece, watch the news, and make sure that before you launch, you still watch the news! There is nothing worse than when you are about the launch and find out that your competitor received coverage in the press thanks to a very, very similar project!