If you’re anywhere near the SEO industry at the moment, then you’ll know that Digital PR is a hot topic. From landing high-quality links to key pages on your website to boosting brand reputation and visibility, Digital PR coverage can work wonders for your brand when it’s aligned to a well-thought-out SEO strategy – so, how do brands go about landing coverage?
We take a look at some tried and tested techniques, as well as digital PR examples that showcase these tips in action.
What are the best digital PR strategies to use for clients?
The media landscape is constantly evolving and a big news headline can throw your digital pr strategy off track (think of all the beautiful campaigns PRs had planned for March 2020 before Covid). So, in order to create a media-resilient digital PR strategy, it’s crucial to plan an approach that provides enough planned activity and reactive stories to keep the momentum of coverage.
The best digital PR strategies use a blend of:
- Planned campaign activity
- Reactive newsjacking
- Proactive newsjacking
- Thought leadership
- Media monitoring
- Expert-lead comments
- ‘Business as usual’ updates
A strong digital PR strategy also places your target audience at the centre of your activity, ensuring that you are targeting the media outlets, communities and platforms that your customer reads, engages with and loves.
3 tips to land digital PR coverage – and real-life examples
How can you bring a digital PR strategy to life? Take a look at our three tips below.
1. Monitor the news for trending opportunities
Tapping into the news agenda is crucial for successful digital PR strategies; and you can’t do that if you’re not regularly consuming and monitoring the news.
It sounds so simple, but often brands can get consumed with a great idea first, without thinking about which publications will be interested in the piece. Regular news monitoring and trendwatching means your idea will be sparked by in-demand news topics, because after all, PR stories should be led by the news agenda.
Instead of trying to shoehorn a campaign or idea into the news, focus on what’s currently going on in the news agenda and what’s coming up.
To help with media monitoring, here’s some great trendwatching tools;
News monitoring
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- Google News dashboards – monitor news from target publications in your own personalised dashboard
- Google alerts – set up alerts for key trends and stories you want to tap into
- Response Source – a live feed of journo requests that let you respond to journalist enquiries and monitor in-demand topics
Social listening
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- Tiktok – with Google now indexing TikTok videos and big nationals covering its viral videos, staying on top of TikTok trends is crucial for landing top tier coverage
- Twitter – #journorequest, #prrequest are all great hashtags to follow, as well as checking out what others are doing in the digital PR community
Data & insights
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- Google Trends – track breakout topics and trends for news stories as they happen (add the Glimpse Chrome extension to see more in-depth insights too!)
- Answer the public – research the questions and answers people are looking for on the web
- Buzzsumo – track content that has had the most shares to assess which is the best publication to outreach to and the best format for that content i.e., listicles, how-to etc.
2. Make the most of reactive and proactive newsjacking
Once you’ve gotten to grips with what the media is covering, you can make the most of newsjacking opportunities; where you tap into trending news with information from your client.
Newsjacking falls into two buckets:
Proactive newsjacking
Where you look at upcoming trends, forecasts and media opportunities to get your clients’ product, service or information in the press. Keeping an eye on the media horizon is key to identifying potential trends and opportunities.
Reactive newsjacking
When you respond to a breakout trend with information from your client. Monitoring breaking news is key.
Newsjacking is a vital part of digital PR strategies, because it allows you to position your client alongside popular news topics that are trending.
Proactive newsjacking Digital PR example
Experts reveals hacks for keeping cool in a heatwave
Extreme weather conditions are always covered by the news, whether it’s a hot spell or a snow on the horizon.
So, to make sure we were prepared to tap into this trend for our clients, we prepared a series of comments from our clients in May, ready for heatwave coverage in June and July.
By already having the comments lined up, we were best placed to react to breaking news around the heatwave. Meaning we secured a number of highly-authoritative links and coverage for different clients from this opportunity, including tips on how the elderly can stay cool in a heatwave which landed linked coverage on the Express and sleep tips from our sleep expert client which landed a gold-tier feature on LadBible and The Mirror.
Reactive newsjacking Digital PR example
Blackpool Pleasure Beach reveals the best staycation cities in the wake of airport chaos
In June 2022, the UK holiday season didn’t really get off to a flying start – media outlets were awash with news of flight cancellations, delays and airport chaos.
With the summer holiday challenges hot on the news agenda, we decided to research a piece on popular staycation getaways in UK, so Brits could avoid the costly queues and chaos.
Why this angle?
Blackpool is a go-to staycation destination, so we wanted to get the seaside resort back in our target reader’s minds as the airport chaos kicked off.
The data
Using an editorial seed list of the top 30 locations for a “staycation” in the UK, we used Google keyword data to identify which are the most Googled destinations to create a top ten list of the best staycation destinations.
With this simple reactive story, we landed 10 pieces of coverage including the Express, The Scottish Sun, The Northern Echo and In Your Area.
3. Consider Digital PR campaigns
Some people speculate whether Digital PR campaigns are still worth the time and investment. In my opinion, whilst the days of throwing together a popular campaign format and expecting it to land are long over – infographics, brain teasers and dream job adverts are popular formats that many the Digital PR has jumped on!
There’s still value in a well-planned Digital PR campaign that has been researched with the lens of keeping the target audience in mind, but also ensuring that there are enough ‘evergreen’ media hooks to make the campaign relevant.
Digital PR campaign example
TakingCare Personal Alarms reveals the best retirement cities for elderly care
Retirement destinations are always a hot topic with the press – a quick Google news search reveals over 2 million articles talking about the subject – so when TakingCare approached us with a brief of getting them in front of their target audience (65+ demographic) we knew retirement was going to be a hot topic.
With retirement destinations hot on the radars of our target media, we decided to create an in-depth index on the best retirement destinations in the UK, drawing upon a number of credible sources.
Why this angle?
TakingCare Personal Alarms wanted a way to introduce their products and services to their target customers before they had a fall; those considering their retirement options were the perfect match.
The data
We combined free data from a number of public sources, such as census data, Rightmove information, TripAdvisor activity data and NHS reports, to calculate which are the best retirement towns and cities for elderly people.
We also broke the data down into different focus areas, such as the best cities for care, the best for outdoor activities and cost.
The results
There were so many angles to use from the data, meaning we secured over 25+ pieces of coverage for the campaign including, what we call, “gold tier” hits on The Express, The Financial Times and regional coverage on The Daily Echo.
Wrapping things up
Digital PR is a crucial part of overall digital strategy, and when aligned to your SEO strategy goals, it can work wonders for your business. By keeping on top of trending news, making the most of reactive newsjacking opportunities and using data-lead campaigns to create content, brands can develop a digital PR strategy that lands top tier coverage.
If you’re interested in leveraging digital PR to boost your brand, increase organic search visibility, build quality links for your website – or all of the above, we can help. Get in touch with us using the form below (we’d love to chat!).
