What is digital PR and why do you need it?

In one of my recent blog posts I talked about how to get press coverage for your business. But, there’s a term that floats around the digital marketing world called “digital PR”. It’s essentially the same as PR – It’s about getting your business in front of new audiences and potential customers, but it has an added benefit… Juice.

No not that kind of juice! Link juice. Or, what we also call link equity. So, what are the benefits of digital PR?

  • You tap into a new audience you may not otherwise have had exposure to
  • It helps you connect with your target audience
  • You increase brand awareness by getting you and your brand noticed elsewhere on the web
  • You position yourself as an industry leader with a real opinion
  • You increase the likelihood of people being led back to your website and engage with you
  • You build high-authority backlinks to your website which helps improve your SEO

So there’s a few benefits, now let’s explain what it is and how it works…

What the devil is digital PR?

It’s nothing sinister. Honest. With digital PR, you’re essentially going to a journalist or site owner with good story or opinion on something. It focuses less on the traditional methods of sending a press release to newspapers and more on getting an article, infographic, data or quote on news and  industry sites, along with blogs, with the ultimate goal of getting a link back to your website.

How does it all work?

To get started, create a list of websites you’d love to write for or be featured on. Then find who you need to approach. As I mentioned in my previous article about PR, building relationships with the person who writes for the site you want to be featured on is critical.

With digital PR there are different types of people you’ll be wanting to reach out to including journalists, editors, writers, bloggers, website and business owners, marketing managers and marketing executives.

Once you have a list of websites, contacts and contact information, email or message them. Start off by commenting on something they’ve written that you like or send them an article that might be of interest to them, for example. You could even write an article on your own site, linking to an article they’ve written and then let them know. It may sound terrible, but massaging their ego works. Just be genuine. Otherwise they’ll smell a rat.

Then, you can go in with your pitch. But don’t pitch any old drivel. It’s got to be something interesting or unique. Here’s a few things you could pitch to them:

  • Details of an experience you’ve had
  • Unique insights into your industry
  • An alternative opinion to an article they’ve written
  • Survey or analytical data

Offer to provide either some information or a complete article and ask for their writing guidelines. In a lot of cases they’ll want a full article, so be prepared to put some time and effort into crafting the content for them and their audience. When you submit your information, quote, data or article, be sure to include a photo of yourself, an author bio and a link to your website.

And, if you’ve written anything on your website that’s relevant to what you’re writing for them, reference it in the article and link to it.

Simples.

To give you a bit more of an idea what you can expect, here’s some of our work, which we’re had published on The New York Times, The Times, The Guardian, Fresh Works, PreLoved and Information Age, for example.

What happens if they don’t come back to you?

It’s common for people not to respond to your first email or direct message on social, so give them a nudge. And, if you send an article and get ghosted, check whether they’ve published the article without telling you (its’ very common) and if they haven’t, tell them the article is going to be sent elsewhere so they don’t publish it without your consent while also duplicating the content.

Other opportunities

There’s a ton of tools available to help you find journalists and site owners who’re looking for content and expert opinions – like yours! These are some tools worth looking at:

There are also tools such as Response Source that have a database of writers you can utilise (for a fee). Another good habit to get in to is checking Twitter. Search for #journorequest, #PRrequest and #Bloggerrequest to find people who’re looking to speak with people who have a story to tell. What’s more, if you have a product, approach bloggers and vloggers and ask if they’d like to review them in an upcoming post.

That should be enough to get you started, but if you need any help, feel free to give us a shout. Email us at hello@quibblecontent.co.uk.

Source: AgroMarketing.digital

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