The Impact of Public Relations

Think about the high performing companies you subscribe to and the image they portray on the web, in social media, and within your inbox.

I’m a raving fan of a company that uses a monkey as part of their brand. Can you guess who that is?

Mailchimp.

Where the name might sound foolish and playful, it’s one of the smartest pieces of software I use on the web. I’m not embarrassed to refer you to their site and I know your entire experience will be a delight — then there’s the product — it just works.

Do the same principles apply to the tight knit WordPress community? Let’s discuss.

Public Relations for a WordPress business

Your first thought might be, public relations is the same no matter what business or organization you’re running. That might hold true, but the WordPress community is a funny duck.

When we evaluate our market, a lot of our customers are our peers. We’re following each other on Twitter, we’re meeting up at WordCamps across the world, and we’re enjoying monthly meetups. We know the quality of your code, the type of business you run, and often your favorite beer.

Connection is made: we come together to invest in each other’s skill and often the product that we develop.

You  throw down your hard earned cash for a plugin you need or perhaps recommend a client purchase that theme own their own. You might be speaking at a local event and rattle off your favorite WordPress shop for those seeking help on a custom project.

I’d say 9 times our of 10 you’re doing this because of the bond you forged by following this company (sometimes, individual) online or at the very least, a colleague mentioned them.

Until WordPress is a household phrase like, I need to build a website, I think PR in our space is very important.

You are what you eat

I’m not saying that this is the be-all end-all of your business. I’m not saying it drives the bottom line either.

This is an evergreen, long tail or full brand strategy for the life of the business. In fact, it’s something that should come natural to a founder or to a team’s culture.

If there’s ZERO regard to one’s image — I’d say that there’s very little regard to satisfying one’s customer. At the very least, there’s little care to on boarding NEW customers.

The attention economy

I’ve been using this phrase for the last 6 months. This is an attention economy. Not just about wether you saw my blog post or listened to my podcast versus another — but that people are paying attention to you. 

Competition can come out of thin air and no one is isolated from it.

In the end, here’s what I want you to do:

1. Build a great product
2. Nurture an audience

There are finer details that go along with building a great WordPress business, but to me, that’s just filler for this easy 2-step process.

• Awesome new features in the roadmap? Sweet, can’t wait.
• Works across all platforms? I’m excited.
• You seemingly care about the audience that helped build the business? You’ve got a life long customer.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on Public Relations in your WordPress business. Fire away in the comments.