PR ON THE GO April 17, 2022

The Creator Economy is Booming

What is one top PR tip for creators?

To help you boost your creator business with public relations, we asked marketing experts and entrepreneurs this question for their best tips. From studying scandals to publicizing your process, there are several recommendations that may help you promote your creator business.

Study Scandals

Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding

"One PR tip for creators is to study the missteps of fellow creators. The online world can sometimes be unforgiving when a creator acts distastefully. Rather than risk permanently damaging the reputation and regard you worked so hard to build, you can avoid alienating your audience by studying outrage to get a feel for online decorum. While online offense might be random, most creator mistakes are a result of a lack of awareness. By studying how users of online platforms react to scandal, you can empathize with your audience and avoid the insensitivity or tone deafness that often leads to fallout."

Focus On SEO and Keywords

Shaun Price, MitoQ

"A great PR tip for creators is to manage keywords and SEO. SEO and PR go hand in hand, they have to work together in order to gain engagement and views from target audiences. As a creator, brush up on SEO and how that affects your business. It is fairly easy to manage and does not take too much time to become an SEO beginner."

Learn Social Media Engagement

John Tian, Mobitrix

"Your followers expect you to engage them, primarily through the comment section under your posts. This is a form of public relations which is why learning social media engagement is valuable. Perfecting it helps to ensure your interactions are meaningful and timely and improve your online presence. Engagement also helps to solidify the relationship with your followers. Through meaningful social media engagement, you can learn from your followers how to improve your content and what they would like to see. Consistently engaging replies can give your brand a personality and enhance trust and loyalty amongst followers."

Focus On Quality Over Quantity

Marc De Diego Ferrer, MCA Assessors

"In the creator economy, it's all about the quality of your work. With so much content being created, it's more important than ever to make sure that your work is high quality and stands out from the crowd. One way to ensure this is to focus on delivering value to your audience. Don't just create content for the sake of it. Instead, think about what your audience wants and needs, and create content that will help them. When you focus on delivering value, you'll quickly build a loyal following who appreciate your work. Another way to stand out from the crowd is to be unique. There are a lot of creators out there, so it's important to find your niche and voice."

Avoid Paying for Press

Isaac Mashman, Mashman Ventures

"As you go about building your brand as a creator aka your personal brand, it is only normal to begin looking for ways to get into the press and leverage forms of third-party validation to cement your credibility. As you do this, then chances are you will come across people who are offering to get you into outlets for a price. They may go as far as to offer verification or follower services. Don't fall for this and understand that you can get into the press without trying to buy your credibility. This leads to a short-lived career and can even harm your reputation if the public finds out the only way you got PR was by buying it."

Build Positive Connections With Clients

Drew Sherman, RPM

"Creators can benefit a lot from forming positive connections with their clients. For instance, when a creator is providing services such as video content for a business's digital marketing efforts, they can support this business by referring customers to it or mentioning it in their social media posts. Actions such as these will make the business want to support the creator in similar ways. Creating this sense of loyalty can go a long way in terms of creators gaining positive PR through their clients."

Write a Simple Brand Story

Marco Genaro Palma, PRLab

"One PR tip for creators would be to write your story in a clear way. Do not overcomplicate things. Create a story that talks about a brand’s beliefs and associated values. Think about what is relevant to the target audience, and how they can relate to what you’re writing about. Making it clear will ensure that your audience is engaged and understands the story in an easier way, which makes it more likely to read through the entire piece and establish a connection with the brand they’re reading about. Your stories as a creator are most impactful when they are clear and concise. That is why the one most important PR tip is clarity. This will generate a greater audience than writing up complex pieces that are hard to follow (even if those pieces tell fascinating stories)."

Reach Out to Relevant Journalists

Stephanie Bernardo, Spiralytics

"Many journalists are always on the lookout for new stories to cover, and you could be one of those. Find the right people to reach out to by checking media outlets or blogs that cover content like yours. For example, if you're an up-and-coming Tiktok star, you're likely to see some lifestyle and pop culture news reports that write about viral Tik Tok trends or viral stories. That's a good sign they're likely to cover you. Take the time to check out a journalist's profile. They typically list their usual beat; some run human-interest stories, while others focus on niches like emerging technology and mental health. Figure out the best way to contact them, then send over a personalized pitch about you. You might just find yourself featured soon!"

Get Featured On Industry Podcasts

James Taylor, James Taylor SEO

"Podcasts are incredible, not just for PR, but also the SEO implications. Often, your website will be linked-to from the show notes of the podcast, which means that you can get a high-authority backlink for free as part of the process of being on a podcast. Furthermore, podcast listings are often syndicated across multiple platforms, and therefore you can often get multiple high-authority backlinks from industry-relevant websites just by showing on a podcast. It's perfect!"

Publicize Your Process

Chris Vaughn, Emjay

"Publicize your process. In today's day and age, people want to see not only the final product, but the creative process. If you are a new creator, continuously publicize your steps, show your customers how you create what you do, and invite them to be part of the process."

Thank you! This experts roundup was created in collaboration with Terkel. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.