5 common PR terms with murky meanings

Marketers and other communicators toss around ‘content,’ ‘engagement,’ ‘storytelling’ and others of that ilk, but what do we mean by them—and what do we mean by ‘ilk’?

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Who fancies a game of Buzzword Bingo?

Here are five words being used with increasing regularity among communicators:

Content

Content marketing is just about the most overused and overhyped phrase in the public relations industry. In 2015, PR is all about the content. “We’re no longer a PR agency; we’re a creative content agency.” Puh-lease…

PR is using “content” as a solution to its problems, when it’s still coming to grips with what content marketing means and is. In this context, “content” is largely meaningless.

Related: Start winning with words, stories, and message mapping at our PR Writing Summit in Chicago, Aug. 5.

Engagement

“What’s the key objective of your social media program?”

“We want people to engage with us.”

“Engage about what?”

“Our brand story.” (Please see “Storytelling” below.)

“And how are you going to measure the success of that?”

“Engagement rates.”

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