Digital PR is becoming a more prominent activity for many brands these days, but it’s so easy to get it wrong.
In digital PR there’s no such thing as guaranteed success. You’re very much in the hands of the news agenda, and while you can build a campaign, do your due diligence and have full confidence that it has the best chance of success, a major news story could come along and instantly take over the news cycle.
Of course, that is a rarity, but while we say there is no such thing as guaranteed success, there is such a thing as guaranteed failure. And that can begin in the brainstorm.
The brainstorm is such a crucial part of the digital PR process and whether you’re working in line with your SEO or overall digital marketing consultants, or going solo with an in-house team, there are a series of steps you need to make in order to get the best output from your brainstorming sessions.
So, to give you a helping hand, here are five key steps to take into account…
Understand the brief
First and foremost, before any thinking goes into ideas, you need to understand what the brief is. What is the overall goal of the campaign? Is it to earn links, is it to increase brand awareness, is it to promote a new product or boost sales?
You need to know what the overall target of it is as this is instrumental in the ideas process as some ideas suit certain targets compared to others.
Alongside this, you need to understand the target audience, as well as publications you want to gain coverage from.
Share that brief and inspiration prior to the session
Once you understand the brief, you need to share this with other people who will be in the session. They need to understand the who, what, where, when essentially so everyone can go into the session on the same wavelength.
By spending the time prior to the brainstorm to brief people, you will encourage people to start thinking prior to the session and potentially come into it with ideas already in their back pocket that suits what you need.
Warm up before diving in
There are many ways to brainstorm effectively, from coming in with no ideas to people doing prep work, and then dozens of different methods that you can use for sessions. There’s no real right or wrong way of doing this, it’s what works best for your team.
However, what can be valuable is warming your brainstorm attendees up before getting started. Play a game, do a quiz, just get the creative juices flowing and encourage people to get involved prior to the brainstorm. You can make this related to the brand you’re representing or completely random. Just get people thinking creatively and it’ll have a significant impact on the engagement once the brainstorm kicks off.
Let everyone have their say
It’s natural in brainstorms for some people to speak up louder than the others. It’s simply a case of personalities. However, that doesn’t mean the quieter or more introverted people in the room don’t have good ideas.
It’s important for everyone to have their say and you can tailor a brainstorm to achieve that, all the while not putting pressure on anyone. Using sticky notes can be a good way for everyone to get their ideas down and be read, while also not alienating anyone for having fewer ideas than others.
However you decide to brainstorm though, ensure people have the opportunity to have their say and it’s not entirely taken over by the more extrovert characters in the room.
Whittle down ideas to a top five
Once you’ve got your ideas down, conclude by discussing favourites that have been mentioned. These will automatically give you a shortlist to work from. You can then take those away and explore the feasibility of them and chance of success. If they’re not quite right, you can look to some of the other ideas that perhaps didn’t make the shortlist.
Do your due diligence on them and make sure they have a good chance of achieving your overall goals before you get to any sort of pitch stage. This will give you a much better pitch proposal, as well as improving the chance of them picking up positive results.
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