The direct marketing power of LinkedIn is partially driven by its customised databases, the influence 3rd party credibility provides, the extra oomph an organisation can gain by using its employees’ profiles and its excellence as a thought leadership platform.

LinkedIn boasts a range of sophisticated tactical tools to help achieve strategic communication objectives. The tools include market research, LinkedIn groups, direct marketing e-campaigns to your range of contacts, Company pages and leveraging off organisational employee LinkedIn profiles.

Establishing credibility and engaging target audiences are key aspects of what both inbound marketing and public relations are designed to achieve. Inbound marketing is actually an ideal manifestation of aspects of strategic public relations as its content is predicated on having identified what target audiences are interested in and value, then the organisation working hard to satisfy those needs.

In this public relations and marketing case study, the essential challenge addressed involves creating an inbound marketing strategy for an infrastructure company. The strategy integrates the following dimensions: 3rd party credibility, strategic alliances, thought leadership and internet communication.

The hub & spoke methodology of digital communication is incredibly important to public relations and marketing communication because it is, strategically and tactically, a fundamental means of understanding, reaching, engaging with and influencing target audiences, as well as generating and leveraging ‘free’ viral ‘explosions’ of organisational messaging across the internet.

Three of public relations’ best practice pillars are either commonly not applied to their potential or, worse, not applied at all. These pillars, the Holy Trinity of public relations – thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances – should be default characteristics of any public relations strategy. This lack of application, and the minimal amount of discussion on them, prompted me to produce a free white paper on the topics.

With the preponderance of social media in the form of blogs or ‘mini-blogs’ (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, even Pinterest) there is an opportunity to revolutionise traditional media’s approach of taking a negative, divisive and conflict-fixated approach. Of course, it has been observed that conflict is what interests people, but that doesn’t always need to be the case. Not being negatively oriented would provide a marketable POD.

The triple treat of content marketing, inbound marketing and brand journalism should be a default inclusion in any holistic organisational public relations strategy. This is because the internet is where people go to for information and where they are influenced; the relevance of SEO; social media helps drive SEO and viral word-of-mouth; it facilities content generation; increasingly mixed reviews on media credibility.

The importance and influence of listening on positive organisational reputation is emphasised in a crisis, with social media being particularly useful in this regard to help: identify emerging issues and key stakeholders and influencers; enable speedy communication during the crisis; and to provide information to improve future crisis operational and communication processes (as well as broader business operations).

Leading Australian corporate affairs and public relations professionals are, on the whole, “yet to be convinced that social media represents a paradigm shift for modern reputation and stakeholder management”*. This is despite there being a tsunami of continually building evidence to support the notion that social media is an incredibly fertile platform for engagement, influence and the achievement of business outcomes.