One of the undeniable facts about SEO and reputation management is that link building has become extremely difficult. As marketers and bloggers are using deceptive and unethical methods, Google is only bound to get wiser and stricter in defining what quality link is. Since the previous techniques are no longer honored, you probably wonder how someone is supposed to build a link and improve his reputation and SERP. While there may be many valid ways, digital PR is starting to become the most sought-after practice in the industry.
What is Digital PR?
Digital Public Relations is a part of your marketing strategy that combines the conventional method of public relations and media relations with modern digital methods like SEO, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and digital reputation management. It enables the business to establish a relationship with reputable media outlets and agencies to gain editorial coverage that serves as a backlink to their website. Thus, improving their SERP, brand exposure, and online reputation. Examples of Digital PR include reaching out to online influencers with huge followings.
What Are the Different Types of Digital PR Campaign?
It would be best to have a data-driven campaign to get the coverage that you need. Journalists will find it interesting since it offers value to their readers. It helps them develop a story, which includes new data that their readers have yet to be aware of. Here are other types of digital PR Campaigns that you could use to advance your SEO strategy and online reputation building.
Data Campaign
Data-driven digital PR campaigns allow you to generate some newsworthy stories based on new and existing data. Fresh and fascinating data will be desirable to reputable journalists and news agencies. Nonetheless, you could also use existing data to determine some data sources that you will use to develop a fantastic story that you will pitch to these journalists. You can use Google Trends, Census, or the Bureau of Labor Stats. Depending on the premises that you are developing, you have various resources at your disposal.
Survey Campaign
Developing a survey would be a fantastic method to gather the data you will use in your pitch. If you want to create one, Google Survey would be an incredible tool. Getting at least 2,500 responses should provide you with a unique dataset for your digital PR strategy. Think carefully about the questions that you will include in your survey. It should help you gather information, but it should not be too complicated. Use questions that the audience will find exciting and will help you yield valuable results. If the result is predictable, it will not be newsworthy.
Map Campaign
It is one of the types of digital PR campaigns where you are using a map to overlay the data. You can develop this campaign with the help of a survey or data campaign. One reason why it is in a separate category is the fact that it performs effectively. When using this strategy, the results are localized to each state. There’s a higher probability that a local news agency will find the data interesting.
Why Is Digital PR Important for Brand Reputation?
Not too long ago, PR was confined to the process of managing the communications between the company and its target market. Today, examples of Digital PR have become one of the most dynamic strategies in the online marketing game. It is reliable too that promotes the brand and enhances its online reputation. If you are still hesitating to incorporate this in your campaign, we will highlight some of the importance of this method when building your brand reputation.
Building Your Identity
The primary goal of Digital PR campaigns is to develop a level of trust between your organization and your target audience. Today, almost all companies can be found in the digital realm. Your audiences are also active on this platform. Therefore, you need to do everything you can to improve your trustworthiness and authority online. With Digital Public Relations, you can use press releases, news, and stories to enhance the credibility and authenticity of your company image. It showcases the things that made you unique such as your area of specialization. A unique business that offers value to the audience will appear more genuine to the people.
Improve Your Reputation
You should never undermine the importance of reputation management as a part of your marketing campaign. It is a sad fact that your reputation can easily be tainted in today’s digital age when information can be easily accessible, and narratives may sound believable. Users who have less than stellar experience from a company can quickly share their grievances on their social media account. By using different types of digital PR campaigns, you are encouraging a positive opinion about your business. It leaves an excellent impression on your target market. PR could help you salvage your reputation and turn the situation around if negative reviews are posted about your business.
Improve Lead Acquisition
If you look at the latest digital marketing statistics, you will see that there has been a 15% increase in the mobile ad engagement rate. It is no longer surprising since more and more people use their handheld devices to consume and peruse digital content. So how does it translate to your business? You can take advantage of this significant traffic through a digital PR strategy. Once you distribute your content to develop your brand awareness, it will capture quality leads. With your strategy, you should showcase your expertise and encourage your target audience to explore more of the things that you can offer.
Make sure that you will personalize your pitch to capture the interest of the publications, journalists, and agencies. By successfully doing this, your lead acquisition will definitely improve. Eventually, you will also notice an improvement in your conversion rate.
Advance your SEO Strategy
Your digital PR campaign is as crucial as your SEO. Having a perfectly balanced SEO strategy and digital public relations would be essential to guarantee the success of your campaign. An excellent SEO strategy will depend upon consistent backlinking. We’ve mentioned above how your digital media PR can be a key behind this. When a news site, journalist, wrote an article linked to your sites, it will definitely boost your online authority, improving your SEO.
Create Relationship with the Influencers and Bloggers
When you are creating well-written content and high-quality materials consistently, it will enhance your online reputation. Digital PR campaigns can help you build a solid network by forging a professional relationship with the influencers and the bloggers. This type of relationship would be beneficial for both parties. The bloggers can depend upon your company to provide them with authentic numbers, while you can enjoy these influencers’ expansive reach and followings. You could also improve your brand awareness, expand your reach, and increase your sales.
What Are the Differences between Digital PR and Online Reputation?
Most marketers will be familiar with what is involved in the standard Digital PR activities. It may include creating a press release and promoting it, scheduling conferences, etc. While the services of an online reputation management agency are similar to a digital Public Relations agency, they are two different campaigns. ORM would be about the strategy contributing to the brand’s long-term reputation, while PR has a promotional nature. Despite their differences, combining these two strategies can create wonders. Around 70% of the netizens will feel more familiar with the company when they read content about them. Relevant content can incite a positive impression to 60% of the online audience.
How Do you Implement Digital PR Campaigns?
Your Digital PR Campaign can be divided into different phases. There are also several things to keep in mind while going through the various stages of your digital media relations.
The Ideation Phase
The ideation phase is where you will choose from the types of digital PR campaigns that you want to dd to your marketing strategy. Ideally, you should have about 3-5 options available. By having different forms of campaigns, you can produce enough metrics that will help you determine which works best for your business. You can identify which will likely help you garner a backlink from a reputable site.
How Should I Do This?
Start by choosing a topic that is linked with your business. You must develop content that is associated with the core function of your company. It will not make any sense to create a travel article if you are in the gardening industry. You should also make sure that it is newsworthy. If you don’t, then the journalist will not pay attention to your materials. Make sure that it will also help them, especially their clicks and their shares. We understand that determining a news-worthy article will not be easy. Here’s how you handle your digital PR.
- Determine your target publication. Identify the common subjects that they cover. For instance, creating a beauty product review would not be wise if you want to have a backlink at a tech site.
- Choose a topic that will be relevant for the month. For example, if you plan to pitch a content on December, you should consider writing an article about Christmas or Super Saturday.
- Choose keywords that are related to your industry. Use various tools like Google Keyword Planner or BuzzSumo.
- Reddit and Quora may help you look for topics that are generating interest from the audience.
Finally, you should also determine if similar digital PR campaigns already exist. There is absolutely nothing worse than going through a rigorous and time-consuming process only to find out that all your efforts will be futile. Before you start with the campaign, use Google and search for a similar article. If the journalist has recently done it, it would be best to look for other topics.
Publishing the Digital PR Campaign
After you’ve completed the above step, it is now time to do the exciting part of the digital PR campaign; transforming the data you’ve collected into professionally-designed graphic arts. When using this as your blog article, there are two things to keep in mind. First, develop customized graphics that will showcase your data. Second, create a copy that will provide heavier details about your research. Be sure to explain how you gathered the data and provide a more comprehensive explanation about the graphic. Once you have designed a graphic and written a copy, you should now look for a platform to publish this. It would be best to add this to your blog site since it serves as your audience’s go-to resource.
Outreach Phase
Now that you’ve published your digital PR campaigns, it is now time to pitch them to your target journalist. If you have access to a media database, it will make things easier. The listing should come with a functional yet straightforward search interface. The list could also be segmented into categories like keyword, location, niche, etc. When pitching your story, here are some things to keep in mind.
- Be Direct and Accurate- One thing you need to keep in mind is that journalists will consistently receive several pitches every day. They will not have the luxury of time to read a lengthy email. Be sure that it is easy to read, short, and direct. Start by introducing your name and your organization. Inform them immediately about the research you made and add some bullet points about some exciting results. Finally, add the hyperlink of your study and thank them.
- Software for Outreach- Some people will choose to use outreach applications. While it is completely fine to use your Gmail account- Pitchbox and Yesware could streamline some procedures. You can use this program to perform the A/B test and gather data to measure the success of your efforts.
The world of the Digital PR Campaign is a challenging one, but it is necessary if you want to advance your SEO and reputation management strategy. While PR may not be the only method to earn quality backlinks and enhance your authority and credibility, there is no doubt that it is one of the most scalable and effective methods to use.