Why Digital PR is an Important Part of Your Marketing Strategy

The formal profession of Public Relations dates back to the early 20th century when Edward Bernay wrote the book Crystallizing Public Opinion.

Since then, PR has continued to evolve along with the changing roles of leadership in corporate America and technological advances.

Today, PR is defined by the Public Relations Society of America as the following:

"Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics."

Some things that traditionally fall within the spectrum of PR include Corporate Communications, Crisis Communications, Internal Communications, Media Relations, Content Creation, Local Events,  Social Media, and Reputation Management.

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR is a new term that has emerged in the last several years.

You will be hard-pressed to find a definitive definition, but there is a growing body of work on the topic that I will summarize below.

Traditional PR helps manage an organization’s reputation by reaching out to media outlets and the local community for third-party validation.

Digital PR still focuses on managing the organization’s reputation. Still, it does so through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques like backlinks, link building, and domain authority, to name just a few.

To help with this, agencies and organizations still network with journalists, but they also include bloggers and other influencers to increase high-quality backlinks, social media mentions, and SEO.

While there is much overlap between traditional PR and modern SEO practices, ensuring you take advantage of the digital aspects of your PR work can result in some positive organizational benefits.

Benefits of Digital PR

Just like traditional PR, Digital PR should increase awareness of the brand but will do it by increasing the quantity and quality of backlinks.

This should increase website traffic, resulting in leads and potential sales.

If done correctly, Digital PR should also increase trust in the organization.

Choose the outlets and individuals to engage that you feel will proactively reflect well on the organization, and then do your research, prepare, and make the pitch.

It should also generate engagement about the brand.

If engaging an influencer or media outlet, they will typically highlight the results on their platform.

Depending upon the outlet, this may expose new people to your organization and generate engaging discussions on their channels, which you can amplify.

RebootOnline has a list of 11 Digital PR examples and explains why each one of them was successful.

How to Measure Success

Digital PR has some basic metrics that can be easily measured:

• ◉ Domain Authority
• ◉ Estimated Page Views
• ◉ Bounce Rate
• ◉ Backlinks
• ◉ Referrals
• ◉ Social Shares

When the goal of the engagement is to increase trust and reputation, that is a little harder to measure but falls within the field of Reputation Management.

The ultimate success metric is whether or not Digital PR helps generate leads and sales for your business.

Tools and Resources

If you want to get started with Digital PR, some websites can be helpful when researching and generating options.

HARO, or Help A Reporter Out, connects journalists seeking expertise to include in their content with sources with that expertise.

Registering as a Source means you’ll get three emails daily with lists of journalists looking for interview opportunities on various topics.

Prowly has a journalist database that allows you to create a press release and pitch to the media reps. It also has a simple online CRM and can give you a company-branded “newsroom” to post all your press releases.

It is a great one to use at a relatively low cost.

If you want to raise the bar a little more, PR professionals regularly use the following three options.

The prices are not listed on the websites if that gives you an indication, but from personal experience, I’ve sorted them from least expensive to most expensive.

MuckRack is another journalist database that allows you to find the right journalists for your story, build targeted media lists, send customized pitches, collaborate with your team, and quantify your impact with reports.

Meltwater is at the next level and has areas of emphasis in Brand Management, Media Relations, Crisis Communication, and PR Reporting.

Depending on the subscription level you choose, you can get media monitoring, social media management, social influencer management, and more.

Cision is probably the oldest and largest of the group, and it has evolved over the years through several mergers.

It has media monitoring, a relationship manager, audience and attribution, and analysis and reporting features.

I have used all of these services at different points over the years, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses, but your budget will likely help determine how in-depth you go with your Digital PR software.

Get to Work

The technical aspects of Digital PR are relatively easy to learn, implement, and assess. The Media Relations aspect of Digital PR involves a little more nuance.

Reporters and some influencers don’t like to be spammed. They are typically overworked and understaffed, and it would behoove you to do a little research before engaging with them.

If you pick the right person and prepare properly, the results could be tremendously beneficial for your organization.