JPA Health took home top honors this year at the 2013 PRNews Platinum PR Awards in the category of Online Communications. Our work to support the Melanoma Research Foundation (MRF) has increased the organization’s unique monthly site visits nearly ten-fold in the last 2.5 years – reaching millions of new people.

There were several key ingredients to this success which are central to achieving results in any online communications campaign:

1. Strong Client Leadership – Despite the fact that the Internet is the primary communications tool for advocacy organizations to reach their audiences, many organizational leaders are disengaged with their digital communications strategy. Conversely, the MRF’s executive director, Tim Turnham, continues to be deeply engaged with the MRF’s online community. Even while delegating online communications to a competent internal team, his strong leadership enables the MRF to adapt to a quickly changing media landscape.
2. Respond To Your Audience – Those of us in PR often get hung up on the messages we are trying to communicate rather than what our audiences are actually looking for. Understanding “user intent” – the information people are searching for– and creating relevant landing pages to answer their specific questions will bring users to your site. Once the audience is there, then you deliver the message.
3. Marry PR With SEO – One of the best ways to increase search traffic is by growing the number of contextual links from other, highly credible websites. By tying traditional PR tactics to digital communications, JPA ensured great placements for the MRF in highly-read traditional media and leveraged each placement to grow direct traffic and search engine positioning.
4. Make Sharing Easy – Search engines increasingly look at “social signals” – the shares, likes and comments – when filtering search results. Adding social sharing icons (not just links to social media platforms!) and unique targeted meta data to each page of your site has a multiplier effect, which will grow your reach in both social sharing and search results.
5. Encourage “Internal” Engagement – Several years ago, the MRF partnered with the Melanoma Patients Information Page (MPIP) – the oldest and largest online community of people affected by melanoma. In choosing to host the MPIP conversation on its own site, the MRF was able to harness the power of a pre-developed community. Many patient advocacy groups have partnered with external vendors to host patient conversations; however, few have provided a valuable service for patients while also dramatically increasing fresh topical content to generate increased search engine traffic, as the MRF has done.

Attracting new visitors to a site doesn’t have to rely on paid advertising. Feel free to add your own tips to the comments below.

Interested in cultivating your own audience? Contact JPA Health to amplify your efforts.