By Polymedia PR.

The right Digital PR strategy can produce great results for your brand’s presence and help you stand out against the competition.

Here are some tips to building your Digital PR strategy:

The New vs. The Old – How does digital PR compare to traditional PR?

Traditional PR might target print-based publications, TV and radio, which can be measured through readership figures and distribution areas. However, it is all well and good getting your business's name in print, but what’s the point if everyone’s attention is elsewhere?

Digital PR is a lot more advanced, targeting online media which is rapidly overtaking traditional print publications, and also offers a much broader audience. Smart, sensible and savvy PR professionals are always adapting as they find better ways to guarantee clients’ success and therefore have now shifted their attention to a mainly digital strategy.

So, what is a digital PR strategy?

Digital PR combines traditional PR with online methods such as search engine optimisation (SEO), social media and content marketing. Digital PR agencies will network with journalists, bloggers, and influencers, to get you quality online coverage, while also improving your SEO. Expect high-quality backlinks from credible online platforms and publications which can have several benefits.

A successful digital PR strategy will:

• Engage your target audience through their preferred platform e.g. websites/video/social media.
• Publish articles or unique data pieces online to gain high-quality backlinks.
• Earn press features through newsworthy press releases.
• Build good relationships with influencers and journalists
• Include campaigns with a good mix of online content, such as thought leadership articles and news pieces

How is it beneficial to my business? 

The five main benefits that you will want to look out for and set as your goals for your digital PR strategy are:

1. Improve your SEO and rankings – Publishing on a high-ranking website, with links back to yours, will push up your rankings in Google and other search engines.
2. Boost your website's traffic – implement strategies that get more people to read about your business and encourage them to share on social media, which will lead to more people visiting your website.
3. Build your brand's trust – A successful PR agency will create engaging content which will secure positive reviews, nurturing your brand image over time. Information-packed articles that are SEO-friendly will signal to search engines that you are a credible source.
4. Generate leads – the strategy should put your products or services on the map. More people finding you will inevitably increase leads.
5. Increase sales – Finally, the most obvious one. A successful strategy will generate leads and quality content which should convert into paying customers.

The 8 Steps of creating a digital PR strategy:

1 - Set your goal

What is it that you want to achieve to meet your objectives and what content is needed to achieve this?

2 - Review your target customers

Outline your target customer and identify their needs while still keeping your own ultimate goal in mind. Target them through their needs by displaying what you can provide.

3 - Content ideation and research

Never underestimate the importance of setting aside time to come up with ideas and angles. Create a list, prioritise them and then the ones with the biggest hook can be researched further.

4 - Target publications

It is vital to identify what publications, platforms, bloggers and influencers would publish your content while ensuring they have access to who you want to reach.

You also need to create something eye-catching and interesting. Here are four essential elements to consider:

• News making – write something new that will make people feel something and provide facts to back it up – no waffle!
• Commercial message – wide exposure while maintaining a clearly communicated message.
• Targeting your media/blogger target - this is essential and cost-effective!
• Size doesn’t always matter – the size of the online platform doesn’t affect your expense but the number of core customers reached does affect your profit

5 - Designing the strategy

As a digital PR strategy, this will mainly focus on the strategies listed above.

6 - Content creation

You should be confident in your digital PR strategy so it is time to draft, redraft and finalise your perfect piece.

7- Outreach, Dominate, Repeat

A consistently effective Digital PR strategy requires you to persistently reach out online to potential publications to get the coverage and respect your professional content deserves. But do not be TOO persistent – remember you want them to remember you, not resent you.

8 - Reuse, recycle, repurpose

Old content can always be transformed. For example, a blog could become an infographic, a guest blog post, an article in a newspaper, a LinkedIn news update or a short video!

The measures of success

As explained prior, digital PR strategy is more evolved and advanced than traditional forms of PR. You can measure digital success through data-driven analytics such as:

Google Analytics can measure the referral traffic from articles about your business online or links from social media.

Moz’s Link Explorer checks backlinks. MozBar can also check the domain authority of your sites and sites linking to you.

Mention can track online and social media shares of articles published or content from your website.

Hootsuite is also a popular tool uses for social media scheduling which can also track analytics such as likes, shares, comments and views.

 

Polymedia is a specialist Digital PR agency, providing services to a range of sectors.

 

 Image by NatalyaBurova on iStock