Public relations consultancy Deep South Media, which champions small to medium-size businesses, gives its view on how PR can help them bounce-back.

Without parallel in British history, the pandemic lockdown has presented all of us at work and home with exceptional challenges.

Amid the Covid-19 crisis, with its heart-rending death toll, communication has never been more important, from the Prime Minister sombrely addressing the nation at the start to public health campaigns across multimedia channels.

In business, too, communication is at the forefront. Responsible firms have been issuing regular updates to customers, working employees, the furloughed, investors, suppliers, creditors and debtors.

Aside from the real fears about contagion, any information vacuum can cause anxiety if staff - many working remotely and unable to sense the vibe that each workplace indelibly has - are left guessing about the future.

Six essential steps to boost your post Covid-19 PR: https://www.deepsouthmedia.co.uk/ready-rebound-six-essential-steps-boost-post-covid-pr/

Here at Deep South Media, now in the 22nd year of trading, we’ve been supporting a diverse range of companies on communications, including content and tone.

In our long experience, senior management teams simply don’t have the time and expertise to do what outsourced professional communicators do.

Looking ahead, as the capsized economy eventually rights itself, there is likely to be increased commercial demand for outsourced PR and wider content marketing, along with other functions such as HR, because cost control will be uppermost in the minds of companies.

Wages are the highest expenditure for most. If it is a question of balance-sheet maths, then a salaried PR manager, according to industry figures, costs ￡41,000 pa.

By way of example, Deep South Media efficaciously carries out the same duties for two-thirds less, a saving of ￡31,570 pa.

Many sensible bosses also understand how Parkinson’s law, where work expands to fill the time available, can seriously damage productivity.

For instance, an employee at a company, who had been tasked with PR even though that wasn’t his or her skill set, spent five days working on a media announcement; it would have taken Deep South Media three hours.

Ambitious firms will also need to rebuild brand after the national emergency. That will likely mean a surge in content marketing requirements, including for media releases, video clips and social media.

Proactive media releases - press releases in old money - are effective tools in the marketing mix and can drive new business.

For example, media releases by Deep South Media have generated returns of investment for a number of clients, including ￡600,000 and ￡250,000.

Well-written media releases reach hundreds of thousands of people through the social media channels of mainstream media, as well as on news websites and in print or broadcast.

A case in point is the Bournemouth Daily Echo, in the same town where Deep South Media has an office.

The newspaper has more than 112,000 unique users on its website every day, with its Facebook page being liked by 127,000 people and 90,000 followers on Twitter.

As firms readjust, they would be wise to make sure that their websites and social media channels are also regularly populated with informative, original content – it powers search engine visibility.

Lockdown has made us even more of an online trading nation; digital opportunity knocks.