If your business isn’t getting noticed, online digital PR can help. Digital public relations is all about getting your business out there in the digital world to boost brand recognition, build relationships with potential customers, and increase brand awareness.
As traditional public relations make way for digital PR, maintaining an online presence has never been more crucial.
I’ve been working in the digital marketing industry for over 10 years, and I have helped many brands gain visibility online through digital marketing, PR activities, SEO, and online ads.
From creating compelling content to building strong online relationships, I know how to manage a brand’s image both online and offline.
Let’s explore how digital PR can make your business shine and why it’s a must-have for small business growth.
Why is digital PR important?
Digital PR, or digital public relations, uses the internet to communicate marketing messages, promotions, and business updates to new and existing customers. Unlike traditional marketing, digital PR allows for instantaneous, far-reaching messaging between your business and potential customers.
Building a solid digital PR strategy is crucial for making your brand stand out in the crowded online space. It lets you connect with more customers and increase organic traffic to your website.
1. Increases brand awareness
Incorporating digital PR into your SEO strategy can significantly boost your brand’s awareness. As the global PR market grows, more potential customers are turning to the internet to search for their favourite products and services.
Here’s an example of a full brand story that we got on AdNews.
A brand’s digital PR efforts and media coverage build trust and authority with new and existing clients.
Think of it like this:
If a potential customer or client sees your brand mentioned on authoritative sites and being talked about on social media, then they’re more likely to engage with you.
2. Improves SEO
Digital PR will improve your website’s search engine optimisation efforts over time. From creating compelling content to engaging frequently with your social media followers, using digital PR effectively will greatly increase your referral traffic, lead generation, and conversion rate.
As previously mentioned above, using digital PR outreach, I managed to get Aperitif Agency featured in the Australian publication, AdNews on February 16, 2024.
If you look at the Ahrefs screenshot above, you’ll notice the traffic chart for February 2024. This is the date I got Aperitif Agency featured on AdNews. Then, you’ll also notice that the organic search traffic grew quite a bit over the March to July period after our brand was featured in the news.
3. Generates more business
Digital PR as part of your marketing campaign increases the likelihood of generating leads and sales which you can track. If you’re able to gain more trust among your potential clients, they’ll feel better about using your services or purchasing your products.
Digital PR gives you a quantifiable way to track how your public relations and SEO efforts are performing. By using search performance data gathered by Google Search Console (GSC) and conversion tracking data from GA4 (Google Analytics), you can track and measure the success of your digital PR campaigns.
The goals of digital PR
When you integrate digital PR into your SEO strategy, it can accomplish multiple goals:
1. Brand coverage in high-authority publications
Digital PR is one of the best ways to get your brand recognised worldwide, as you’re levying the power of the internet and its 5.44 billion users, which allows your brand to reach more customers.
Image credit: Statistia
Good digital PR has a huge role in shaping your brand’s image on a global scale.
Online PR makes this process much more seamless compared to traditional methods. Building relationships online is generally a faster route to better press.
2. Establish long-term relationships with journalists
You enhance your brand’s coverage by building relationships with journalists, government entities, or employees who link back to your website in their publications or web pages.
By establishing yourself as a brand authority on a particular subject over the long term, you’ll become the business journalists go to when they need information for a story.
Long-term relationships will only increase your potential customer base and trustworthiness as a brand and business, as journalists highlight your business in their news reporting and web copy.
3. Improve SEO through link building and brand mentions
Acquiring high-quality backlinks and brand mentions on reputable websites helps to increase your rankings in search engine result pages (SERPs) and boost your overall business SEO.
A good way to think of a backlink is like a ‘vote of confidence,’ popularised by Google’s PageRank algorithm. Search engines use these backlinks as one of many ranking factors to determine the relevance and authority of a website.”
This can also be done by guest posting on authoritative news sites by creating leadership articles (I.e., op-eds). Here’s a great example by Mark Bouris who wrote an opinion piece on News.com.au about Australia’s housing crisis:
What are some effective digital PR tactics?
There are many effective digital PR tactics. Below are a few that are tried and tested.
1. Reactive PR
Suppose a journalist approaches you (either in person, by phone, email or on social media) for comment on a story. In that case, that is a huge opportunity to export your business to the masses.
It’s known as reactive PR and is an incredibly effective tactic for increasing the number of eyes on your business. Answer that email, phone call or DM as soon as you’re able (with a quality quote or answer to a question, of course).
2. Data-driven campaigns
One of the fantastic aspects of the digital space is that your digital PR campaign will be driven by data and information rather than hearsay and speculation. This allows you to have the upper hand in getting your brand out there and create newsworthy content, accurate, well-researched blog articles or whitepapers.
Here’s a great example that I recently saw in one of Ahrefs’ email digest newsletters, which featured Pieter Levels side project, Luggage Losers (to compliment his Airline List project).
This is a great example of a linkable asset that uses data-driven research to show something new.
The cool thing about Luggage Losers is that it can be used for digital PR campaigns — but because of the unique data that is slightly controversial, it can also be used to generate organic digital PR mentions like this news article that was featured on Yahoo! News below:
3. Press releases
Taking your business to the Press is a great tactic to increase eyeballs on your business. Rather than just putting out a short statement on X or Facebook, craft a well-written press release that announces a large event for your business (maybe a meet-up or virtual tutorial, etc).
You can also use a press release to provide the public with important company updates, such as a change of seasonal hours, business location changes, or policy or key personnel changes. Well-shot and engaging video content is a great way to do this.
4. Creative campaigns
Gather your most imaginative minds and create innovative campaigns that capture the attention of the public!
Whether that’s a collaboration with another well-known business or local celebrity, to launch a new product, or using a viral video trend in the context of a service that you provide. Leveraging the power of the internet to your advantage is a fantastic way to get your brand out there.
Here’s a great example from Coles’ Winter of Sports giveaway campaign which was featured on News.com.au. This particular news story times nicely with Australia’s cold winter that everybody here is experiencing right now and the upcoming Olympics.
While the Coles news story did not generate a backlink from News.com.au it did, however, generate PR.
5. Newsjacking
If you consider yourself an expert in your particular field and have something worthwhile to say about the latest news in your field, don’t be afraid to ‘newsjack’ and contact your most notable journalist to provide your insight.
Here’s a simple and easy-to-understand example of how I could implement newsjacking for Apertif Agency.
Let’s say Google releases a new algorithm update that’s impacted a lot of businesses, then I could reach out to journalists who are writing and covering the news and share my thoughts with them.
As an alternative to directly contacting journalists, I could instead, post my thoughts about a particular topic on social media to communicate an opinion or my brand’s messages.
For example, on Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, if it resonates with a journalist and people who follow me, then it might get picked up and mentioned by a reporter.
Summing up
Today, most of the world conducts business online. Brands that thrive are those that stay in tune with what their customers need, want and will want in the future.
Traditional PR professionals and PR agencies have played significant roles, digital PR offers a dynamic approach to using the data gathered from digital PR tactics to create a roadmap to success.
Need help with digital PR or SEO? Then get in touch with Aperitif Agency today.
