fbpx

Best Digital PR Strategies To Build Relevant Links

Digital PR Strategies

Digital PR strategies work the best to earn powerful backlinks and secure a top-of-the-line brand reputation.

Does this statement sound unreal?

Digital public relationships (PR) says ‘Hi.’ Check out this blog to enlighten yourself.

In this blog, you will find out what is digital PR, the types of digital PR, the benefits and goals of digital PR, how to start a digital PR campaign, effective digital PR tactics, the right digital PR strategy that works the best, and a lot more.

What is Digital PR Strategy?

Digital PR is like traditional PR, but everything happens online.

Digital PR is a marketing technique — but not just another marketing tactic to promote your product, service, or brand.

According to Statista’s analysis, 46% of large US enterprises (with 500+ employees) recognize the importance of public relations and utilize it in their business strategies.

types of digital pr

The reason why online digital PR has become so huge is because it doesn’t focus on achieving one thing.

Time has leaped forward, and public relations is no longer about using megaphones and billboards or getting mentioned in a PR section of a newspaper. Now, value-driven content, box-blowing outreach practices, etc., are the secret to stand out.

There goes a lot more in this mix, but let’s not forget:

Employing random digital PR techniques will NOT pay off without well-defined goals and a streamlined approach.

That’s where a digital PR strategy helps out.

what is digital pr strategy

Think of digital PR strategy as a plan designed to improve brand loyalty, enhance relevant traffic, and gain quality links in one go while moving the power of websites, blogs, social media, news outlets, podcasts, and other digital channels.

We can quite confidently say digital PR and digital PR strategies are two sides of the same coin.

Digital public relations is a brand-building technique, whereas its strategy side defines the best-suited path to employ this technique in the best way possible.

Before excavating the idea further, let’s settle the old dispute: Traditional PR VS. Digital PR.

Traditional PR VS. Digital PR

With the advent of online PR, digital PR agencies have given traditional PR backstage. Even newspapers like THE INDEPENDENT have abundant offline operations and have embraced the digital paradigm.

The market situation shows.

seo pr strategy

Now, online PR strategies carpet innovation PR solutions that sync with emerging media consumption habits and technological innovation are available.

It doesn’t swipe away traditional PR; it is still used offline to bring journalists on board, air your milestone on radio programs, get a shout-out from journalists, and get mentions in newspapers..

However, with digital PR tactics, now public relations plays on a larger forum by combining:

  • SEO
  • Content Marketing
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing

online pr strategies

Considering the horizons of both traditional PR and digital PR, both these types of public relations work on different channels and have varied marketing and PR strategies.

 digital pr tactics

While paving a promising path for digital PR link building, a digital PR company plays a crucial role, i.e., using digital PR and SEO, combining the power of both online marketing techniques to leverage unprecedented benefits.

SEO PR Strategy – How SEO & Digital PR Link Building Work Together?

We have talked about digital PR, its basics, and its objectives. You bring public relations into action and see the business performing oh-so-good.

However, all these results will go down the drain without touching SEO because all these efforts are to gain Google’s attention, which is incomplete without SEO link building.

The majority of link builders consider digital PR to be the best digital PR link-building technique.

digital pr objectives

We all know links are important to build authority and gain higher visibility.

However, after dipping into the SEO pool, you find that:

  • When you strive to win the race on SERPs, you find that building quality links is a constant struggle.
  • Surviving and thriving online is challenging for businesses with the surge of popping competitors.
  • Continuous Google updates narrow down the space to build quality links.

This clumsy situation demands a varied link-building tactic that doesn’t bring value beyond just fetching a link — just like digital PR.

Though SEO and PR work hand-in-hand, they are also full of differences. Here is how they both have their own stand-alone identity.

How Is Digital PR Different from SEO?

digital pr link building

Online PR has become huge. But it only works the best when paired with your SEO efforts.

Using them together brings benefits to the company’s growth and development.

SEO needs digital PR, and digital PR services are all set to fuel SEO. Good for both!

What are the Benefits of Effective Digital PR Strategies?

Public relationships has always been a key catalyst for brands, and with the digital phenomenon, it has become huge. When 86% of American adults rely on digital media for news, you know digital public relations strategies are your way to go.

Here is why digital PR is important for businesses:

types of digital pr

●      Establishing Brand Identity and Awareness

Digital PR can help you reach your target audience with your message. Featuring in popular publications exposes your brand to a new audience, reaches your current customers with more impact, or impresses the previous customers with a new persona.

The trusted and authentic digital outlets and publications spread your name to a broader audience, wrapped into their own credibility, which gives your brand a unique position. This boosts the online presence of your brand and enhances identity like never before.

●      Developing Strong Relationships within the Industry

Instead of being an invisible star, it’s always better to become a known star within your industry to reap unprecedented rewards and benefits. And digital PR methods do this the best for you.

Every pitch you make and every clap you get from a journalist is your ticket to firmly anchor your feat in the industry. The more mentions you get, the more competitive advantage you fetch. Once big publications quote you, it becomes easier to get mentions from small publications.

Initially, it might be hard (harder at times!), but it will pay off for future events or announcements.

●      Driving Relevant Traffic and Sale

Online PR places your link in famous publications within compelling content that inspires and motivates clicks. These links drive referral traffic that turns into your customers through promising web experiences, increasing your sales and revenue.

Links coming from reputable websites make people talk about your brand, which initiates the word-of-mouth carousel. It encourages relevant traffic to become your active audience rather than just by-passers.

●      Earning Powerful Links to Boost SEO

Digital PR services throw the dart to target two different goals. That helps them transfer data-driven results to clients. Digital PR link-building strategy paves the way to earning powerful links, which are one of the components of powerful SEO results.

Likes, mentions, and other engagement methods on social media give a signal of engagement to Google that translates as the brand’s popularity and relevance among the audience. These essential signals also push your website higher on SERPs.

Digital PR Tactics: What Drives the Campaign Beyond the Horizon?

Once you lay hands on exploring examples of digital PR that drive the strategy, you find that it is similar to link-building techniques.

If you are already building links, it would be a breeze for you. However, don’t panic if it is your first time — we are here to help.

Here are some proven and tested public relations techniques that work and drive results:

●      Compelling Storytelling

Remember! Journalists, media, and the whole internet are about content, information, and data – that’s what journalists, media outlets, and websites crave. Digital PR strategy gives them this, but here we are talking about authentic and newsworthy content or even thought-leaders comments.

Now, the problem is how to connect with journalists or grab their attention. What if I say there is a place where journalists sit to get your quote or news? Well, meet HARO!

Here, journalists post their requirements or queries, and if your expertise qualifies their standard, your comment will get published in a reputable publication.

what is digital pr strategy

HARO follows a rigorous process to pick pitches to ensure quality. So rest assured that opting for this option will give you a considerable push as you will get a powerful link from a high-authority news site.

●      Get the Best Out of Research-Based Content

Conduct ground-breaking research and pitch it to the journalists.

If your research and data-driven insights are really worth it, you will get a response. Timeliness is important in the world of news. Journalists like to break the news before anyone else. So, this Digital PR tactic strikes journalists’ needs on point.

However, make sure your research has these characteristics:

  • Relevancy
  • Exhaustive
  • Insightful
  • Data-Driven
  • Result-Oriented

For example, check out this blog:

 seo pr strategy

It is not just like other research; it is massive and insightful. That’s why it still has impressive numbers of visitors.

online pr strategies

Such research establishes you as a thought leader within the industry and journalists’ favorite because you give them what they love the most.

You can also follow the social media handles of your target journalists and analyze their content patterns. Create your content according to your analysis to ensure a ‘YES’ from them.

●      Submit Press Releases for Guaranteed Results

Have you launched a new product? Ventured with a famous company? Achieved a new milestone? They are all worth announcing in the news, and your audiences will be glad to know about them. So, why not try a press release?

Once you submit a press release, whenever other sites will quote the press release’s message, your sites will give a reference link.

digital pr tactics

Besides getting a link, press release digital PR strategies also give other advantages, such as building brand awareness, credibility, relevance, a better reputation, and a lot more.

●      Newsjacking is the Must-Follow Trend

Newsjacking is exactly how news works.

Newspapers and news portals write about an event when it happens, not when it’s gone and dusted.

Similarly, newsjacking rides on the wave of news events and trendy topics to stay relevant and gather new eyeballs. The key is to be exact on time. It can be tricky because if you miss the exact time, you will lose the opportunity to step ahead.

No matter how good it sounds to know trending topics, searching websites, social channels, and forums can be so tiring that you might want to drop this idea.

Trending topic-searching tools can be your savior here.

Check out these tools to use the newsjacking technique with news stories hot from the oven.

digital pr link building

Getting your hands on the curated content doesn’t translate into success until you don’t know how to hit the dart on point.

Full understanding, followed by discreet and timely action, can make a difference.

●      Use Creativity to Stand Out

In the sea of marketing tactics and PR campaigns, your only key to the difference is to think differently.

Today’s customers live in a data smog world where their brains are loaded with traditional marketing pitches and predictable ideas — they don’t get impressed.

Businesses have also understood the significance of being a goat in a herd of sheep. That’s why nearly 80.5% of marketers consider that creativity plays a major role in the effectiveness of a campaign.

digital pr objectives

The simple process to reach the cherry is to find out what people like. Check out social media channels, trending Google searches, YouTube videos, and forums.

Once you know the deal, give a twist to the concept and get people talking about your brand.

A Step-by-Step Process to Create a Digital PR Campaign

Running digital PR strategies might knock your confidence down when you know about so many successful digital PR campaigns. You might end up thinking:

How can I make the strategy different?

Is there any shortcut to implementing the campaign

What should I do to achieve better results?

Do I need any groundwork?

Shall I develop a strategy first or start outreaching right away?

All these questions and many more can make you shilly-shally, and you need to make better decisions about your campaign.

So here, we have come up with a step-by-step process for a result-oriented digital PR campaign that delivers the desired results.

STEP 1: Set Realistic & Tangible Goals

This is the first step of the strategy that sets the floor for developing the remaining campaign.

Goals are not random ideas proposed just because we need to fill this column. They are concrete ideas tied to some determined action that will pursue positive results.

You can get some clarity by answering 5W and 1H.

  • What — What is the goal about? [Target]
  • When — When do you want to achieve it? [Timeline]
  • Where — Where should the company stand after achieving the goal? [Result]
  • Why — Why should the company focus on this goal? [Long-term Goals]
  • Who — Who is responsible for the results? [Team Members]
  • How — How will you achieve and measure the results? [Process]

The 5W & 1H gives a predictable outlook of the campaign.

Here are some common goals that businesses yearn to achieve.

Business Goals Actions Required Examples
Problem-Solving Goals Address a problem without any acceleration and future disruption. Crackdown on the inventory tracking errors by 50% by the end of this quarter.
Growth Goal Expand services set, the marketing penetration, and the size of the company. Reduce employee turnover by 15% within the next year
Financial Goal Define economic aspects — revenue, cost management, and profitability.

 

Increase 25% of annual revenue and use 20% to boost business growth.
Marketing Goal Increase market influence, expand customer base, and market share.

 

Open new stores in different cities within a year.
Process Goal Keep your process agile and make it easy for the workforce to operate efficiently. Bring operational efficiency and cut slag by revising deadlines.
Company Culture Goal Conduct a company-wide survey to learn about real-life problems and solve them for employee satisfaction. Every quarter, two witnessed cultural issues will be addressed and resolved.
Profitability Goal. Focus on increasing financial outcomes that strengthen the company’s cash reserve. 10x profit with respect to the last year.
Sustainability Goal Make your company green by following the sustainability process throughout the product lifecycle. Achieve carbon neutrality and reduce plastic usage by 35% within the next five years.
Customer Relations Goal Apply techniques and methods to win customer trust, attention, and retention. Reduce the time spent addressing customer queries to one hour.
Development Goal Keep focus on the growth curve and conduct workshops and seminars to keep employees fit to enter the new market. Pass 100 trainees within each quarter to filter the real talent pool.

 

These goals often join with the profitability and revenue generation at the back. So, be very specific about your goal.

STEP 2: Dig Out Your Audience Persona

Who is the ultimate user of your product? Your current and potential audience!

So, moving forward without knowing the targeted audience is like preparing Chinese for someone who likes Japanese cuisine.

Moreover, it creates a sense of distrust between the buyer and the audience if they don’t get what they expect from you due to poor analysis.

These subject matter areas are essential to explore:

  • Demographics
  • Online Behavior Pattern
  • Industry Pain Points

So, instead of creating a bad experience for your audience, first focus on a few things.

seo pr strateg

These points are essential to narrowing down your focus so that you can reach the real audience persona quickly.

STEP 3: Conduct Deep Analysis and Research

Deep analysis and research are like pillars of the digital PR campaign.

Whether it’s competitor analysis or analyzing the situation to reap the best, research is fundamental to hitting the nail on the head.

Conduct thorough research and analysis to identify relevant media outlets, influencers, social media platforms, bloggers, and journalists in your industry.

Deep analysis gives insight and direction to create a robust strategy. So:

  • Find out the preferred and popular media outlets
  • Decide if you need journalists, influencers, bloggers, or all
  • Look at ways to build relationships in your niche
  • See what type of content is popular
  • Conduct competitor analysis
  • Analyze competitor strategies and relationships
  • Explore the current digital PR SEO trends

Once you know the inner story, IT BECOMES EASIER TO WIN!

Step 4: Focus on Content Ideation & Creation

It’s no longer a secret that high-quality content drives the online world. Whether you want to gain Google’s attention or grab the love of the audience, supreme content works – and now, also to impress journalists.

But before creating content, conjuring a compelling idea is essential.

Thanks to the research step, you already have insight into the content preference of your audience and current trends. However, you can’t jump up on a random topic and start creating content. That will become the fodder of the ‘Delete’ folder.

So, ideation gains the central position here! The content can be of many forms; some are:

  • Articles and guides
  • Listicles
  • Infographics and data-driven visualizations
  • Gamification
  • Videos and GIFs
  • Podcasts
  • Whitepapers
  • Research Studies

Choosing content depends on three factors: the audience’s needs, the publishing site’s preference, and the content tone of the publishing site.

Once you have selected the content format and topic, you are good to slip into the content creation phase.

what is digital pr strategy

While writing the content, focus on these points.

Content should be:

  1. Interesting, engaging, compelling, and creative
  2. Written on an unexplored edge of the trending story
  3. Resonating with the audience and publishing site
  4. According to your brand style and the publisher site’s tone
  5. Creative and newsworthy to ensure more engagement

From ideation to writing content, it is a long journey that can be bumpy and tiring. But that’s how it is done to achieve long-term goals. So, stick with the right formulae, and you will be good to go.

Step 5: Make a List of Targeted Influencers and Journalists

You will already have some idea in your mind regarding the targeted people to pitch your content.

But still, you need to streamline the jumbled-up data and create a curated list of journalists, bloggers, and influencers.

Instead of just writing names, write down their contact information, traffic flow of their sites, sites’ domain authority, audience relevance, content tilt of the publishing site, and a lot more.

Things become a lot easier, streamlined, and effective with a list in hand.

Step 6: Media Outreach & Building Relationships

For a robust SEO strategy PR, building relationships should be a continuous process.

From following them on social media channels, commenting on their posts, and sending a meaningful DM to sending an appreciation email, this all is part of relationship building.

Starting at the end or beginning of the strategy makes things complicated and time-consuming. However, having a curated and well-researched list can also work.

Consider this opportunity as the first step towards building relationships. For that, you need a compelling and tailored pitch.

Here, your research step will help create the pitch for outreach.

Follow these critical points for writing a pitch:

  1. Keep it simple and avoid self-praising
  2. Convince them how your content is beneficial for their audience
  3. Follow instructions and amend the content if requested
  4. Tell about your experience a bit to show you are not a newbie
  5. Stand out in your subject line to get eyeballs
  6. Bring the x-factor that wins their heart among other emails

Believe me, journalists, bloggers, and influencers are looking for gold content, and they love to post it, but only if your pitch is impressive.

STEP 7: Monitor & Manage the Campaign to Check Performance

You haven’t spent your efforts and money just to publish content and then leave it to perform on its own.

Using analytics and performance tracking tools gives insight into the campaign results.

Here are a few monitoring and tracking tools to keep your performance on the line:

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console
  • Ahrefs
  • Social Media Analytics

These tools become your savior and inform you about any issue in the campaign so that you can rectify the issue and run the campaign smoothly.

KPIs to Measure the Success of Digital PR Campaign

Remember the goal you set in the beginning? Now is the time to see whether it is achieved or not.

Unfortunately, many businesses don’t understand the importance of measuring KPIs

types of digital pr

Here are a few KPIs that help you decide if your campaign is a hit-or-miss case.

1.    Links Earned

An intelligent way to measure success is by the number of links you’ve earned from your coverage. You can use a link-building tool like Majestic or Moz’s Open Site Explorer to see how many links your site has earned from a given piece of coverage.

2.    Referral Traffic and Sales

Another way to measure success is by referral traffic and sales generated from your coverage. You can use Google Analytics to track how much referral traffic your site gets from a given piece of press coverage, and you can also track how many sales are generated.

3.    Social Shares

Social shares are another way to measure the success of your digital PR efforts. You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to see how many times a piece of content has been shared on social media.

4.    Brand Mentions

You can also measure the success of your digital PR strategies by the number of brand mentions you’ve earned from your coverage. You can utilize tools like Mention and BuzzSumo to track how often your brand is mentioned online.

5.    Domain Authority

DA is a metric created by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. The higher your DA, the more likely you rank on Google.

Final Thoughts

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every digital public relations campaign and strategy depends on the requirements of businesses.

If done right, it can change your bottom line with all the good things businesses need.

However, its effectiveness depends on digital PR strategies. Follow the steps discussed in this blog, and you can sail the boat safely.

Looking to invest time and effort in digital PR? You can do it!