One of the most difficult things in SEO PR is when your client fails to deliver. Youve done all the hard work of arranging an interview with an important media outlet and then you have to take the step of putting your client in an interview situation. You have to trust them to deliver - and they dont - so all your efforts have been wasted.
Public relations for SEO has moved on tremendously - the key is now building long-term relationships with journalists so that you can pitch them, interact, and get your stories published.
But unlike personas in link-building, you cant be faceless in public relations. There must be real, named people behind every story. And inevitably this will lead to some of your clients being interviewed - be it a telephone, video, or studio interview.
And then youre into dangerous territory - you have to give up control and let your client speak directly to the media. Anything can happen in an interview - and every PR can tell you of disastrous interviews. Probably not disastrous in the sense of being totally incompetent, but disastrous in failing to get the message across clearly and powerfully.
Its fine if your client has got a well-oiled PR machine to handle the media. But if youre juggling both SEO and PR, thats unlikely so you have to you to make sure everything goes well.
This is in the lap of the gods, isnt it? No - you can prepare them.
This is done in two ways:
Basic media training helps people get comfortable with the interview situation - talking to journalists, carefully listening to questions, and getting important messages across in a limited period of time. To do this properly you need to work with a freelance journalist or trainer.
Making your client feel comfortable is only part of the story; you need to make sure they know the key messages they must get across.
The mock interview is the ideal place to test how well they do this. If your relationship with the client is strong enough, get your journalist to deliberately divert them down irrelevant paths. For example, your client talks about doing business in New York, and the interviewer asks questions about the city, rather than the business your client did there.
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How to Prevent Client Failures in SEO Public Relations