What is digital public relations, first?
The phrase “digital public relations” is increasingly used in digital marketing. You’re not the only one who doesn’t know exactly what it means. Most of us are fine with the digital public relations portion, but many are unsure what the phrase means.
Understanding how digital public relations differs from conventional digital public relations is essential to comprehend what it is and how it functions. Same goal, different strategies. Their approaches to content and engagement with those audiences are worlds dissimilar, even though both strive to improve the client’s reputation and raise brand recognition among target audiences to increase sales.
1.1 What distinguishes conventional Public Relations from digital PR?
It’s important to consider the individuals involved in the sector to gain some background. Today’s PR experts often follow one of two professional routes.
The first group has a history in conventional PR. This group started their careers offline before the digital revolution, focused on crisis and reputation management and raising brand recognition through a network of indispensable connections in their specialized field that they had amassed over many years. Then, the digital revolution happened, and everything was altered. Traditional public relations professionals are accustomed to working with print media. Still, they are now often glad to negotiate coverage on pertinent websites and experiment with social media, influencer marketing, and any other field that would help their clients.
The second group consists of SEO experts who choose a career in optimized content strategy over the more complicated aspects of SEO. This organisation quickly realised that while content is king, success is determined by a complicated system of measurements after surviving the 2011 Penguin update.
Where the two branches of the discipline have begun to converge is in digital PR. Digital PR experts create compelling material with an original perspective or hook that will appeal to journalists and mix it with an SEO strategy, optimizing the content to meet all relevant search criteria.
The information in question may be a blog post, an infographic, poll results, a video, interactive content, or anything else you believe the gatekeepers of top-tier websites will find interesting. Buzzfeed-style “listicles” earn 74% more links on average than any other material.
What advantages can digital Public Relations offer?
The advantages and rewards of a successful digital PR strategy are not to be taken lightly. You may expand the reach of your brand online and expand your business thanks to all of the following advantages:
Makes appropriate links from reliable sources and websites
When reputable websites cite you as a source, both Google and the general public start to regard you as a reliable source of important information.
Raises the score for search rankings
We know that Google penalizes sites that obtain backlinks dishonestly and favors those who do it organically. Although our search overlord reserves the right to modify its policies at any time, one thing you can rely on is that it will always give preference to websites that it recognizes as purveyors of useful, high-quality content.
Build links that are earned, not bought.
Assisting Google, audiences, and potential consumers in recognizing your brand as an industry participant and thought leader instead of a novice or amateur buying attention. This leads to…
increases the identification and reputation of your brand
Similar to how smart content marketing operates. Audiences value your willingness to commit to thorough research and effective narrative.
Boosts traffic
You’ll get more traffic to your website as other sites with large audiences and high domain authority link back to your material.
How can I build a potent digital public relations plan?
You will discover that a good approach often necessitates the following phases, regardless of the campaign’s type.
Set content objectives.
It’s best to start with your objectives, like with any approach. In terms of digital public relations, this entails assessing the goals of your content and campaigns about the overall aims of your firm and business plan.
Several illustrations of digital PR or content goals:
- Boost homepage traffic
- amplify traffic to a certain product page
- increase brand exposure in general
- Boost social media presence
- spotlight on fresh goods
- Focus on USP
How can I generate solid concepts for online PR campaigns?
Even while creative promotion and proper content packaging are important, they won’t matter if the angle doesn’t work. Finding a compelling, distinctive viewpoint may take some time, perhaps more time than any other step, but it is well spent.
Your objectives will form the basis of the ideation process. You could wish to generate content ideas around your USP if the goal is to increase brand recognition. If the goal is to increase visitors to a certain product page.
Identify popular subjects
Social media is fantastic for informing you about what’s trending. Still, you may also need assistance from Google Trends and a service like Buzzsumo, which shows you what material has been shared most frequently after you enter a few keywords.
Office Research
Find out what else is available, seek fascinating facts, and look for any holes your material might be able to cover.
Brainstorm
Independently begin this process by making notes depending on your findings. Once you’ve identified a few that have promise, gather your team, including those not often involved in creating content, and try out some novel brainstorming strategies. The ‘hat’ or parallel-thinking strategy is currently our fave.
Develop personalities
Create one or two personas for your target journalists and bloggers and certain audience niches. To say the obvious, viewers won’t have the opportunity to view it if you don’t receive coverage.
Make an effort to identify three niches for which the material would be appropriate based on your target and journalist profiles.
Pre-outreach exercises
Nothing stops you from contacting your target journalist to inquire about their interest if you aren’t sure about a concept.
How can I contact journalists?
Contrary to Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams” movie, you can either expect people to show up or not.
You can almost certainly count on someone eager to share your new infographic or intriguing new survey results with their audience.
The issue is that posting material on any old website doesn’t do much good. The more domain authority, the better because Google focuses on quality and relevancy. We aim for a DA of no less than 30 as a general guideline. The issue? Everyone else wants to get their stuff on these websites as well. Press releases are swarming journalists, and competition is intense.
Take some time to properly understand the material and concentrate on the goals before you start the outreach process, especially if there are digital PR staff members managing the outreach who weren’t participating in the outreach process.
Make one or more press releases.
Keep your sentences short, your narration precise, and your information pertinent. Be very explicit about what you want them to do.
Make an effective outreach email.
How to design the ideal outreach email varies from person to person. Make sure it has a good storyline, an engaging title or subject line, is brief, and is personalized since no one appreciates a sloppy template.
Think little (as well)
Although not all connections are created equally, they don’t necessarily have to originate from large, glitzy websites. Gaining links from various pertinent, lesser-authority websites can also help your SEO.
How can I assess the effectiveness of online PR campaigns?
Every campaign will have a different way of evaluating its performance. Everything is based on your goals, which were previously stated.
Links
Start where it’s easiest: “How many high-quality links did the item receive? On smaller websites, how many links? Make sure you’re satisfied with their placement, the anchor language used, and how they look. The value of links appearing in the article’s centre is substantially greater than those concealed in footers or on the sides.
It’s fantastic when journalists use your information, but it’s useless if the link is broken or delivers value in the incorrect direction. Since you are helping to fill their site with free, worthwhile information, don’t hesitate to pursue sites until they get it right.
Brand recognition
It is tougher to quantify this. You can track brand awareness growth over time by using Brandwatch to find out how many people are talking about your company online. This will be greatly influenced by…
Facebook shares
You can find out how frequently content has been shared using tools like Buzzsumo.
Traffic
Check Google Analytics to see whether there was a traffic increase after the publication of your material.
Conclusion
In the end, you don’t have much influence over link building. Don’t worry; this is wonderful for those willing to spend in producing high-quality material. Prior to the Penguin update, it was more difficult for users to find the results they were looking for.
Today, earning links might be challenging, but the benefits of producing quality content are greater.
Link-building, often known as digital PR, is a technique that entails producing material with a distinctive angle and contacting bloggers and journalists to obtain coverage (and, subsequently, links) on pertinent websites.
Higher search rankings, social media shares, more brand recognition, a better reputation, and more traffic are some of its advantages.
Content and company goals will influence strategy, which is essential.
The trickiest element is developing a compelling viewpoint, which is best handled using in-depth research and creative brainstorming methods.
The tastes and needs of the target sites and their audiences should guide every step of the process.
The goals determine success and may be tracked using the abundance of internet tracking tools that are readily available.