Sounding Like a Broken Record

Empathy is the main component to reaching out to your publics. Whether if its through marketing, advertising or public relations, finding your niche is about exploring the feelings and beliefs that aren’t your own. In other words, it requires to see someone’s life perspective from a totally different lens.

In fact, the ideal mix of hygiene, hub and hero content provide an example of using a different “lens” so to speak. Consulting firms are designed to assist in building a company’s brand and find that particular niche. Yet when companies ask for consulting in terms of reaching out to corresponding publics, they intend to dig deep into emotional value of consumers.

These concepts lay out the steps of introducing intrigue to a specific medium in relation to the product a company is trying to sell. They begin with having future consumers and customers connect with their product through appealing to their self-interest. Methods may consist of how-to videos or other digital DIY tutorials.

Next, companies begin to glue you to their product or service (just in case if they haven’t already). The creation of addictive and thrilling in-depth content are meant for individuals to sign up for a subscription. From my experience, they just get my attention, which is good considering that the average time to attract one’s attention is eight seconds.

Lastly, hero content brings a viral buzz that forces a bandwagon effect on the masses. This brand awareness technique is considered to be the most risky because you really have to dig deep into the emotional archives of people who are seeking to watch something that’s viewed as badass to a lot of people.

How does all of this relate back to empathy? This is the part where I begin to sound like a broken record. Empathy is the primary asset in order to survive and grow as a business. Everybody knows that companies are in it for a profit.

However, my experiences on social media conclude that companies still want to promote themselves and don’t intend to reach out to customers unless if they want to address concerns that are communicated to them personally.

When doing my secondary research for my campaign, I saw that United Way Suncoast used multiple ways to reach out to the community. Mostly, they used social media and community events to get their name out there. By doing so, I got the impression that they care about people they want to bring in and mold for future generations.

Therefore, if a public relations professional wants to reach out and showcase content that their organization created, you have to find out the purpose of that content, which is to show how your company’s brand messaging is going to benefit your publics. Also, it might not hurt to research United Way Suncoast as well.

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