Why Digital PR
If you can't keep your brand in the spotlight, generate leads and conversions, or simply get all of the major news outlets to write about your brand, digital PR could be the missing piece. There are numerous tactical approaches that can be used to generate business outcomes. The ability to achieve your goals and KPIs is what makes digital PR effective. You can accomplish this through data-driven, search engine-focused campaigns. When compared to traditional methods, these can be twice as effective.
It enables you to reach a much larger audience than you could with traditional offline methods. To maximise impact, it employs internet-based tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, influencer outreach, and social media marketing. Unlike newspapers, magazines, and primetime news, it does not have to wait for an audience to reach out to it.
How to Create a Digital PR Strategy
A digital public relations strategy should be developed to work with any type of media, not just print or electronic. However, it is equally important to create content that is both interesting and noteworthy enough to be consumed by a larger audience.
If you want to create a digital PR strategy for any campaign or for greater brand building, follow these steps:
1. Get your goals straight
It essentially refers to the desired outcome of a digital public relations campaign. Is it about increasing online traffic, bottom-of-the-funnel conversions, or simply getting more backlinks for SEO? Setting goals can help you determine the steps you'll take to launch any digital PR campaign. Knowing your 'why' before your 'how' is the most important aspect of any strategy.
2. Know your audience
Determine who you are doing it for and what type of audience is appropriate for your business. A Volkswagen will employ a different strategy than a Rolls Royce or a Lamborghini. Demographics and geo-locations alone will not suffice. Create a strategy for getting under the skin of your target audience, learning what they like, what they read, where they get their news, which websites they visit, and which podcasts they listen to. Analyze every detail and try to create broad personas of your target audience to understand what they want, dislike, and what will keep them interested in your brand.
3. Keep your media close and competitors closer
Map out the media outlets for relevant news in your industry. Assess what your competitors have been up to, where they have been featured, which journalist is their favourite, and what causes they support. To maximise mileage, it is critical to understand the pulse of the media and reach out to them at the right time. Make a media and outreach list tailored to the campaign you want to launch.
4. Create powerful content
Your content is king, and it is critical that you nail it. Run insights and create content that will interest your audience based on the personas you created for them and the data you gathered. It is also critical to time media pitches, thought leadership articles, infographics, videos, listicles, and podcasts. Memes and GIFs are also excellent icebreakers. Making a mark in this social media world is difficult, with so much content available that no one cares about. Make yours stand out from the crowd. What comes next? Use social media to increase your reach.
5. Create a compelling pitch
Every day, journalists are inundated with PR calls, with over 100 calls and even more emails. That irritates them greatly. As a result, it is critical for a brand to stand out from the crowd and engage them in such a way that they cannot say no. From the subject line to the emailer, images, and infographics, create compelling content. Share something that will pique the media's interest so that they will contact you even if you aren't looking for a story or a backlink.
6. Leverage tools as much as possible
This cannot be overstated. While platforms like Cision help businesses identify relevant media across markets, HARO allows them to reach out to the best journalist for the job. Ahrefs and SEMrush are tools that can help you analyse keywords, backlinks, and related content, while Meltwater can help you analyse campaign results.
7. Measure your results
Measuring KPIs and outcomes is just as important for digital PR as goal setting. Ad-value equivalents (AVEs) are no longer used. Because data rules the roost, there are numerous ways to learn how a campaign performed. Get to the bottom of each result and carefully examine what went right and what didn't. Impressions, backlinks, and conversions are just a few of the metrics you can use to calculate ROI.
