With the advent of social media, the tables turned for professionals working in the PR industry. All of the sudden, everyone was a publisher. What took weeks to organize – in terms of promotion for businesses and causes – now happened in a blink of an eye.

Some will say that social media networks are the worst imaginable PR nightmare there is. In some cases, this is true. It’s true for businesses and professionals who don’t know how to leverage the power of social media and who are ill-equipped to handle the challenges.

However, PR professionals who manage to rise about this superstition quickly learn that social media such as blogs and networking platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the rest – are a cost-effective and efficient way to get your message out there without it always appearing as a marketing effort.

This is because PR goals remain largely unchanged – you want to use it to:

• Grow your customer base
• Establish yourself as a thought leader
• Build awareness in the community
• Nurture a responsive and loyal community

You can use your content to smartly market and position yourself and achieve everything listed above much cheaper than when you’re paying for advertising.

1. Company blogs are an asset

Company blogs are read extensively. Just take a look at Moz, Kissmetrics, and Unbounce. They have thousands of daily visitors and readers on a regular basis and have managed to create a dedicated following that evangelizes their products.

So what’s the trick? Quality and unique content, that’s what. If you can publish helpful content on a regular basis you will so start building a strong base or readers. You can then subtly weave your PR efforts into it.

The important thing is that you publish good, quality content that will help you grow your reader base. If you are publishing fluff you won’t get too much traction. If you want your company to do it right consider hiring a professional writing service, such as AussieWriter, to tackle that bit for you.

2. Harness the power of influencers

Before, it was quite difficult to get an endorsement from someone who stands for something in your industry. Content marketing changed all that pretty quickly. Everyone wants mentions and recognition.

One of the best things you can do with a piece of content before you publish it is to send it to an influencer in your industry. Solicit their opinion and suggestions and make sure to mention any work that they’ve done on the piece. Not only will you end up with better content, there is also a chance that they will share it on their social networks maximizing your exposure.

3. Think about guest posting

Paid media placement is all well and good but today it feels a bit out of place and untrustworthy. Readers are much more likely to read and believe content that appears naturally on blogs that are industry-related.

Establish a working relationship with top bloggers in your industry and try to regularly contribute to their blogs. Remember, these don’t even have to be completely new pieces of content. You can easily revamp and repurpose some of the content you have on your own blog and syndicate it out to those you think might be interested in it.

4. Leverage your expertise

Online publications have a difficult time filling the need for quality content that is consistently on the rise. That is why they reach out to contributors on a regular basis. However, you don’t have to wait until you are contacted.

CEOs, CFOs, and other big shots in your company definitely have something to say. Sit down with them and draft an article that you’re going to send to Entrepreneur, Forbes, or to some other publisher. The key consideration here is quality – if your content is good editors will jump at an opportunity to feature you in their publication.

One other thing that will help you get that placement is the author’s social following. If the author of the text has a large Twitter following your job finding the placement will be that much easier.

5. Don’t neglect your paid promotion

Even though content marketing and PR go hand in hand, one does not replace the other. Have a healthy mix of both – favoring, of course, natural content marketing as much as you can.

But if you pay for something make sure to get eyeballs on it as well. It might seem braggy but you spent time making it and creating it – it should not go unnoticed.

Content creation and PR are a match made in heaven. If you are not leveraging and combining both, you’re not doing a very good job. Jump down to the comment section and let us know about how you use content marketing to fuel your PR efforts!

Kiara Halligan works as a content marketing consultant for Aussiessay. Kiara believes that every marketing and PR campaign could be spiced up greatly with quality content.