Content Marketing & Digital PROrganic Search (SEO) Content The benefits of having a Digital PR strategy for your business Apr 20th, 2021 Public Relations has been a tool used by businesses for years with the art of press releases to promote and inform changes or share big announcements being a process since the early 1920’s. However, a new form of PR has arrived and made a lasting impact on the digital marketing world; Digital PR Combining the intersection of traditional public relations, content marketing, SEO and social media, Digital PR allows businesses to discreetly advertise their business to a more extensively wide audience than ever before. Digital PR allows practitioners to go beyond the standard press release by combining a brands message with engrossing storytelling to achieve wider online coverage with the added possibility of backlinks to a company’s website. Digital PR is essentially a strategy that involves applying the principles of PR to digital content – creating content with a unique angle or hook and outreaching to bloggers and journalists in order to get coverage (and therefore links) on relevant websites. Creating interesting campaigns and using compelling storytelling, Digital PR is able to access coverage in a way traditional PR never did. Businesses are no longer stuck to the ideology that one channel or one category fits their brand, with the ability to outreach and combine all methods of content marketing with that of a strong narrative, Digital PR is allowing businesses to promote more strategically. Generates relevant links from credible sources and sites When respected sites reference a business as a source, consumers begin to see that company as a source of valuable information – as does Google. Links to a website from third parties are seen as a ‘vote of confidence’ by search engines like Google, who recognise that if other people are citing pages on a businesses’ site, it’s probably because they include something worth seeing. Digital PR is now a go-to for most digital marketers as top-tier websites such as national and international press, as well as many niche publications, just won’t link to a site for any reason other than a great news story. Increases website traffic By achieving the attraction of other high domain sources and huge audiences link back to a business’s content that attracts more audiences to that company’s content equalling to a greater number of visitors to their site. Having more people visiting a business’s website can then influence purchases. Though this isn’t the aim of a Digital PR campaign, it can be a welcome side-effect. Some content naturally conveys key messages and USPs to potential customers. However, journalists won’t touch anything that is salesy so ensuring that receiving purchases isn’t the focus is key. Still has all the benefits of traditional PR The main purpose of PR has always been about staying at the forefront of people’s minds. By helping to ensure a brand is associated with trusted publications like major news sites or niche industry titles – in turn, boosts feelings of trust between target audiences and brands. This is still achievable from Digital PR, as well as introducing a brand and its products to an entirely new audience and increasing a sense of expertise and credibility. Digital PR is not just about large-scale, content-led campaigns; an effective Digital PR strategy should also cover thought leadership outreach, the pitching of quotes and insights from experts within an organisation, and other traditional PR tactics. Enhance a business’s reputation Social media, Trust Pilot and TripAdvisor can be both a blessing and a curse for businesses. There will always be the possibility that consumers might have a bad experience with a company and have decided to avenge this via bad reviews. It’s more likely that someone will go out their way to tell people about a negative experience instead of a positive one. This is where Digital PR comes in, as it enables a business to drive its brand’s reputation in anyway it wants, delivering messages on what is crucial to their company while offering a crucial opportunity should a crisis happen. Aside from crisis management, getting a company’s name out to the media will also boost reputation by having a positive influence on target audiences to see their business. If the big publications, such as The Times or smaller industry publications are talking about the brand, that is instantly a vote of confidence in their favour to their audience. Repurposed content Content marketing is an important part of a digital PR campaign. The more that content is shared and found, the more a business’s reputation and status as an authority begins to grow. Content that is already written can be transformed into a different form of content and shared or published on a different platform by repurposing. This is a great way to keep costs down when doing Digital PR as, for example, a single blog post can be expanded with new information added and repurposed into several other types of content such as: An infographic A guest blog post An article in the local newspaper An article in a trade publication A LinkedIn news update A short video In this way, one piece of content can be transformed into information for multiple sources, all of which can be shared to help promote and grow a business’s reputation. It’s not a matter of simply rewriting the content, but also to continue adding value and reinforcing their voice as an authority. This is also great for when part-taking in reactive PR. If you want to find out more about how you could improve your backlink profile and other ways to enhance your search engine visibility, request your free bespoke organic search (SEO) site analysis today.