PR ON THE GO January 10, 2024

From Trends to Insight: Transforming Data into Engaging Content for Entrepreneurs

In this expert panel, our PR and growth experts shed light on where data is revealing trends and leading entrepreneurs into a realm of deep insights. We asked our experts how to turn raw data into compelling content that resonates with your audience. From the nuanced art of social listening to other data-driven strategies, we reveal how understanding and leveraging this wealth of information can drive engagement and propel startups to success.

• Monitor the right indicators to adjust your strategy in time
• Collect data based on your goals
• Focus on key data types in PR campaigns
• Understand your audience's needs from the data
• Get a clear understanding of the user journey
• Include audience demographic details and response rates
• Include website traffic data and email open rates
• Create content in response to recurring user questions
• Data should drive content creation, not the other way around.
• Key data includes media coverage metrics
• Get real-time feedback on audience preferences, sentiments, and concerns
• Analyze the reach and frequency of PR messages plus the volume and sentiment of mentions

Monitor the right indicators to adjust your strategy in time

Julia Voloshchenko, PR Manager at Usetech

"Analyzing and collecting data plays a big role in content production as well as the role of the business. Before launching a new brand or product, PR campaign or anything else, analyze the market and competitors, supply and demand, potential customers, etc. This will help you form an up-to-date strategy and think through additional options for action.

After launching a PR campaign / article / event, analyze and monitor several indicators: coverage, mentions of the company or brand in the network, website conversions or clicks, growth of website traffic, growth of subscribers, attracting new customers. Knowing these indicators will allow you to adjust your strategy in time and not get a crisis situation.

By the way, many companies provide services in the field of Big Data, Machine Learning and analytics, so that companies can make the right decision based on the collected data; as well as visualize the data in the form of graphs or infographics. For example, Usetech offers services from data collection, to data analysis and visualization, to consulting in this area. Data collection is also useful if you are working with clients or business owners. When justifying a decision, you can lean on data and metrics to make the right move."

Collect data based on your goals

Emily Reynolds-Bergh, Owner at R Public Relations

"In marketing and PR, data can paint a picture of your campaigns’ effectiveness better than anything else. The data you should collect depends on your goals. If you want to improve cost per conversion, track your click-through rate and content engagement. If you want to improve impressions, track views and overall reach. If you want to reach new audiences, track unique pageviews and clicks."

Focus on key data types in PR campaigns

Kate Ross, PR & SEO Specialist at Irresistible Me

"As a PR specialist at Irresistible Me, we focus on several key data types in our public relations campaigns. First, we collect media coverage data (including the volume, sentiment) and reach of coverage across various channels. We also track engagement metrics on press releases and social media posts, such as likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates.

Another crucial data point is audience demographics and behavior, which includes understanding who is interacting with our content and how. This involves looking at age, gender, location, and even the time they are most active online.

Using these data insights, we can drive engagement in several ways. For instance, by monitoring social listening, we identify what customers are saying about our brand or products in real-time. This helps us to quickly address any concerns or capitalize on positive sentiment. We might adjust messaging or strategy based on trending topics or feedback received, ensuring our campaigns are resonant and relevant.

Additionally, analyzing engagement patterns helps us identify the most effective channels and types of content for our audience, allowing us to optimize our efforts for better reach and impact.

For example, if we notice a particular type of social media post drives more engagement, we'll produce more content in that format. Data insights are invaluable for making informed, strategic decisions that enhance the efficacy and impact of our PR campaigns."

Understand your audience's needs from the data

Sam Tarantino, Fractional CMO and former CEO of Grooveshark at Harmonic Reach

"As the Founder of Grooveshark and now leading a Fractional CMO practice, my experiences rely heavily on data collection and converting it into meaningful insights. One of the key aspects of data we collected at Grooveshark was user behavior and preferences - what they listened to, when they listened, and how they interacted with our service. This data helped us tailor our marketing and user engagement strategies, significantly boosting our user base and monthly active users.

In terms of PR campaigns specifically, it's crucial to track metrics like impressions, engagement, click-through rates, and media coverage. This gives you an idea of how wide your reach is, how effectively you're engaging your target audience, and the overall impact of your campaign.

Take social listening for example. By monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, or relevant topics, you can gain a wealth of data about your audience's perceptions, questions, and needs. During Grooveshark's marketing campaigns, we analyzed social conversations to understand our audience's reaction to new features or campaigns.

This enabled us to not only respond to feedback in real-time but also influence our future product development and marketing strategies. For instance, when we discovered our users' need for personalized music recommendations, we revamped our user interface to include this feature, which significantly increased user engagement.

The key is to turn this data into engaging, valuable content. By understanding our audience's needs from the data, we were able to create blog posts, social media updates, and personalized emails that resonated with them, effectively driving engagement and growth."

Get a clear understanding of the user journey

Dominic Zijlstra, Founder at Adaptify

"Campaign success is heavily reliant on a clear understanding of the target audience and their user journey. SEO campaigns are data-driven; we collect and analyze multiple data points, ranging from keyword rankings, backlink profiles, organic impressions, user demographics, to engagement metrics, such as time on page and click-through rates. Each piece of data informs our strategy, identifies opportunities and highlights areas of improvement.

For example, with Adaptify, we mainly track impressions, backlinks, and keyword rankings. An increase in the number of backlinks and keyword rankings would eventually lead to a significant growth in organic traffic, as demonstrated with our clients Beacon Digital Marketing and NachaTech.

In our SEO PR campaigns, we also employ social listening to keep track of customer sentiment, track conversations about our brand and discover trending topics. These insights allow us to tailor our content, proposing more relevant PR backlink opportunities, and better engage our audiences.

In summary, it's not enough to just collect data. The key lies in generating actionable insights from that data to catalyze strategic decisions, enhance user engagement and content relevancy, and ultimately achieve your PR objectives."

Include audience demographic details and response rates

Steve Pogson, Owner at First Pier

"With over two decades of experience driving growth in ecommerce, I have a strong focus on data-driven decisions. I've found that collecting the right data is crucial in all campaigns, public relations included. Key data points to consider include audience demographic details, such as age, location, and interests, alongside response rates, such as the open rate on press releases, direct messages, or emails.

Insights from this data can undoubtedly drive engagement. For example, understanding your audience's interests can help tailor your content to meet their preferences, thus leading to increased engagement. Social listening is a vital tool in this regard.

From my experience as a founder of First Pier, a Shopify Expert Agency, we've found that utilizing Shopify's inbuilt analytics and reporting features provides in-depth insights into customers' behaviors. Also, tools like Google Analytics 4 can enhance our understanding of our audience. This data helps us create compelling, personalized content, ultimately boosting customer engagement.

Another case in point is the use of AI in content marketing. With 92% of retailers employing AI-driven personalization, it establishes how data insights have redefined customer engagement strategies. It presents examples of how data insights can lead to curated experiences and dynamic pricing, all contributing to an increase in engagement.

Mastering the art of data collection and interpretation is a game-changer that can significantly intensify audience engagement."

Include website traffic data and email open rates

Magee Clegg, Founder & CEO at Cleartail Marketing

"Understanding and utilizing data is an essential part of executing successful public relations campaigns. At Cleartail Marketing, we heavily rely on data to make informed decisions and to gauge the success of our campaigns. Specific examples of data we collect include website traffic data, conversion rates, social media engagements, and email open rates.

This data provides us with valuable insights. For example, by analyzing website traffic data, we can understand where our visitors are coming from, which part of our website they engage with most, and what prompts them to convert from a visitor to a customer. This helps us formulate strategies that target our audiences more effectively.

Social listening is another valuable data-driven strategy, especially in PR campaigns. It allows us to understand the issues and topics that are currently important to our target audience. For instance, in a campaign for a B2B client, we observed increased discussions around cost-effective marketing strategies in their industry circles. Based on this, we focused our campaign on showcasing how our client's solutions were cost-effective, leading to a 278% increase in the client’s revenue within a year.

Combining data from various sources gives us a fuller picture of the audience’s behaviors and preferences. For example, while executing an AdWords campaign for a client, we found that certain keywords led to the most conversions. We used these insights to optimize the client's webpage and content around such high-converting keywords, resulting in an astonishing 5,000% ROI for the client's AdWords campaign.

Verified testimonials, such as 5-star reviews, can also be compiled and analyzed as data - one of our campaigns generated 170 5-star reviews within a 2-week period. These positive reviews can serve as social proof and contribute to enhancing a brand’s image and reputation.

In conclusion, any piece of information or feedback that can be measured or quantified can be used as data. Leveraging such data to draw actionable insights is the key to driving engagement and ultimately achieving campaign objectives."

Create content in response to recurring user questions

Ken Fortney, SEO expert and Founder at That Local Pack

"As a content creator with an extensive background in SEO, my career has shown me the importance of leveraging data in public relations campaigns to drive engagement. Data collection is paramount when it comes to understanding audience behavior, trends, and preferences, and it directly influences content creation and strategy planning.

One example comes from my experience as a Senior Content Marketing Manager at a leading tech platform. We utilized various data analytics tools to collect user data and draw insights that informed our content strategy. We tracked metrics like website visits, average session duration, bounce rate, and click-through rate. These key data points enabled us to identify what kind of content resonated best with our audience and make data-driven decisions to optimize future content.

Data insights also can drive engagement through social listening; by monitoring conversations about our brand across various social platforms, we were able to craft content that directly responded to our audience’s desires and concerns. One example of how we deployed this tactic was by creating a series of blog posts in response to recurring user questions and challenges we identified during our social listening efforts. Each post addressed a particular question or challenge, providing users with actionable solutions while positioning our brand as an industry authority. This strategy resulted in a sizable increase in blog traffic and heightened audience engagement, proving the effectiveness of using data to inform content creation.

Social data insights also can fuel timely and relevant content creation. During my tenure as Marketing Director at an AI-focused venture, we balanced our evergreen content strategy with data-driven topical content, enabling us to increase brand visibility by riding the wave of trending topics relevant to our industry.

Lastly, data is not a static resource. The key to successfully using data in PR and content marketing is regularly analyzing and adjusting your strategies based on new insights. The landscape of the internet is ever-changing, and continuously monitoring your data will help you steer your content to align with shifting trends and audience behaviors."

Data should drive content creation, not the other way around.

Joe Amaral, Founder at Elevated Digital Marketing

"As a digital marketer with years of experience and several successful startups under my belt, I can decisively say that data is the cornerstone of effective public relations campaigns. Collecting the right kind of data can provide invaluable insights to understand your audience better and create engaging content.

For instance, while running a major campaign for one of our clients in the wellness industry, we collected data on audience demographics, geographical locations, social media preferences, and more. This provided us with a comprehensive picture of the target audience which we used to tailor our content strategy.

Social listening tools gave insights into customer sentiment, trending topics, and competitive landscape. We discovered, for example, that many people found the idea of starting a wellness journey intimidating. Armed with this knowledge, we created a series of blog posts demystifying common wellness myths, achieving high engagement levels.

In another campaign for a home renovation company, we focused on keyword research data. We targeted localized SEO keywords that potential customers were using in their searches, and created content around those terms. This significantly improved our client's search rankings and drove site traffic.

Data can be transformative, but remember that it should drive content creation, not the other way around. It’s the strategic use of that data to create engaging, relevant content that makes the real difference in public relations."

Key data includes media coverage metrics

Abhishek Shah, Founder at Testlify

"In public relations campaigns, essential data to collect includes media coverage metrics, audience demographics, and sentiment analysis. For instance, tracking the number of mentions, impressions, and the tone of media coverage provides insights into campaign reach and public perception. Additionally, gathering data on audience demographics enables targeted communication strategies.

Social listening, exemplified by monitoring social media platforms, allows us to gauge real-time audience sentiments and identify trending topics. By analyzing this data, we can refine our messaging to align with audience preferences, ultimately driving engagement and fostering meaningful connections."

Analyze the reach and frequency of PR messages plus the volume and sentiment of mentions

Connor Butterworth, Owner at Southwestern Rugs Depot

"In public relations campaigns, essential data to collect includes media coverage metrics, audience demographics, and sentiment analysis. For instance, tracking the number of mentions, impressions, and the tone of media coverage provides insights into campaign reach and public perception. Additionally, gathering data on audience demographics enables targeted communication strategies.

Social listening, exemplified by monitoring social media platforms, allows us to gauge real-time audience sentiments and identify trending topics. By analyzing this data, we can refine our messaging to align with audience preferences, ultimately driving engagement and fostering meaningful connections."

Get real-time feedback on audience preferences, sentiments, and concerns

Krittin Kalra, Founder at Writecream

"In public relations campaigns, it's crucial to collect specific data points that help gauge the overall effectiveness and impact. Here are some examples of the data that should be collected: media coverage, reach and impressions, social media engagement, website traffic, and message amplification - Monitor how press releases, articles, or campaign content are shared across different channels. Evaluate the number of shares, retweets, and mentions to assess the amplification of the PR message.

Now, let's discuss how data insights can drive engagement, focusing specifically on social listening:

Social listening involves monitoring and analyzing conversations, mentions, and sentiments about your brand or campaign on social media platforms. By leveraging data insights from social listening, two key strategies can be implemented:

1. Identifying Key Influencers: Through data gathered from social listening, you can identify individuals or groups who frequently discuss topics related to your campaign. Engaging with these influencers can significantly expand your reach and help drive engagement. Their endorsements or participation can motivate others to join the conversation.

2. Adapting Content and Strategy: Data insights derived from social listening provide real-time feedback about audience preferences, sentiments, and concerns. By analyzing this data, PR professionals can adapt their content and strategy to be more relevant and engaging. Understanding the audience's interests and pain points allows for the creation of tailored content that resonates with them, ultimately driving higher engagement levels."

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