PR professionals are responsible for building and enhancing their clients’ reputations. Success in this line of expertise comes from commercial awareness, knowledge of emerging trends and being well-informed of the specialised markets they serve.
Throughout this post we’ll discuss various challenges faced by PR and communications professionals and how an FT Group Subscription can help them overcome these barriers.
Harnessing a vital resource of accurate information
With a never ending flow of news, PR and communications professionals know that sourcing accurate and up-to-date information is a continual task. From collecting information around industry trends or identifying emerging themes, an FT Group Subscription helps professionals overcome these challenges.
An FT Group Subscription gives whole teams full access to premium content, including additional access into deeper insights and analysis from over 600 journalists around the world. Premium digs deeper into news, events and emerging trends, whilst finding connections between stories. In turn, PR professionals gain a clearer understanding of information and specific matters affecting their clients.
We like how the articles are written and the fact that they are more analytical than in other publications. They go deeper into the issues, and show what is relevant for businesses and the economy.
Senior Associate, CNC
In-depth sector knowledge keeps PR professionals ahead of the game, whatever industries they serve. PR and communications teams use the FT and our premium content to make connections between different sectors and help to shape their decision-making. So whether it's to source material for a media release or navigate a PR crisis, using an FT Group Subscription provides the full breadth of accurate FT journalism.
Keep track of trends and identify future opportunities
Staying ahead of emerging trends requires a proactive and persistent approach. Today’s PR and communications professionals cannot miss a beat. They need full awareness of trends to leverage opportunities for clients and likewise, their own company. Albeit with opportunity comes risk. Whilst weighing up the positives of a trend, PR professionals must also consider the impact of risk and how best to manage any possible outcomes.
With the right information at their fingertips, PR and communications teams can help clients adapt to trends. The FT’s runaway markets series is just one example where agenda-setting FT coverage provided a valuable steer on how organisations should think about their comms strategies in response to booming stock markets.
Another way PR professionals become aware of emerging trends is by being across many topics at once. FT tools such as email notifications and myFT can help corporate subscribers keep track of developments.
With myFT, subscribers can access content quickly and follow topics surrounding different industries, companies and people. Once following the relevant topics, email alerts can be set up. This will create an alert once a new story is published around that topic, additionally you can create your own daily or weekly email newsletter. Given the breadth of topics across FT.com, this tool allows subscribers to concentrate on specific topics most valuable to them.
Reading the FT is a great help within my day to day role. The FT’s breadth of topics, analysis and international perspective is valuable to me and when I’m advising clients. The trusted advice and quality journalism that the FT provides allows me to understand and manage very specific issues.
Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting
Effective client engagement
As well as accessing content quickly, sharing FT content with external connections or clients is straightforward. FT articles are often used as catalysts for client conversations and Enterprise Sharing is a new feature we’ve launched for our corporate subscribers to help facilitate this.
This new sharing tool provides a frictionless way to share FT articles via links at scale with clients and third parties. Enterprise Sharing links can be viewed 100 times or more depending on requirements.
Find out more or request access to the Enterprise Sharing tool here.
The main benefit of having the FT Group Subscription boils down to knowledge and everyone within the organisation having access to that. It’s that information that ultimately gives us the platform to advise our clients better.
Director, Headland Consultancy
Maintaining a well-informed organisation
In-house communications teams are commonly responsible for gathering information and news, and distributing it around their company. Whether it is to brief a board of directors or share company-wide updates, it’s important that the right information reaches the right places.
Companies rely on their teams being well informed on all matters that could impact their company, including how their competition is performing. By using an FT Group Subscription, whole organisations can gain access to FT.com, making it easier to keep everyone in the loop.
One way that communications teams make internal sharing possible is through the FT’s third party channel access. FT content is accessible on over 60 aggregator and media monitoring platforms, allowing subscribers to easily search for information across many sources and push it to the relevant teams. Learn more about the benefits of channel access for your communications team here.
Another way subscribers can share FT articles between their internal teams is via reading lists. These allow corporate subscribers to group together multiple articles shared via one link. By using an FT Group Subscription it means that everyone who has signed up to the company’s subscription has the same access to these articles, making article sharing straightforward.
This video covers the different ways articles can be shared internally, including through reading lists.
Whether helping clients to act on new opportunities and risks, or keeping board members briefed on industry developments, the FT is indispensable for PR and communications teams. An FT Group Subscription is the most flexible means of equipping comms professionals with the FT's industry commentary, and ultimately makes them more commercially aware advisers.
Group Subscriptions - Get in touch
An FT Group Subscription extracts the intelligence that’s relevant to your business and delivers it via the media and technologies that suit you best, saving you time and keeping you informed on what matters.
Help your team make better business decisions with the FT’s trusted commentary and analysis. For more information about how the Financial Times can help your organisation or to request a free trial, please get in touch.
