Learning how to publicize your business online can seem overwhelming, but with the right tools and strategies, you can improve your reach and visibility on popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Vertical Leap explains what digital PR is and how it can help your business grow by expanding your network with outreach opportunities.
What Does Digital PR Mean?
Digital PR is a strategic way to amplify your message. It’s about reaching out to influencers online or on other websites who are interested in what you have to say (and may be willing to share your story with their audience or quote you in their content).
Your outreach opportunities could include bloggers, social media influencers, or journalists. The key is identifying who these people are and mapping out a plan of action. Once you’ve done that, you can start to create custom pitches that stand out from everyone else’s emails in their inboxes.
What Is the Difference Between Digital PR and Traditional PR?
Although they both involve communicating your message to a target audience, traditional and digital public relations are different in several ways. The first, and most obvious difference is that digital PR takes place primarily online.
It’s also often more personal than traditional PR, which tends to be one-size-fits-all messaging. Whereas you might have one spokesperson for a brand on TV or radio, for example, with online PR you might address your target market through multiple channels – blogs, social media networks, email newsletters – each with its own approach.
How Does Digital PR Relate to SEO?
SEO is an online extension of traditional marketing in which businesses use various methods to increase traffic to their website by optimizing on-site content, building quality backlinks, etc. Digital PR goes above and beyond SEO by serving as an online outreach campaign.
This means that rather than just looking at SEO factors (although those do factor into a digital PR strategy), you’re also seeking out opportunities outside of your website that will bring attention to your brand; for example, if you sell organic foods, writing a guest post for a healthy living site could be seen as outreach.
Digital PR takes your SEO efforts one step further by helping drive traffic from other websites (from which you would then hopefully gain backlinks), including social media channels.
What Are the Benefits?
Digital public relations is a great way to connect with customers, grow a brand’s reach, increase sales, and boost revenue. It allows you to integrate your physical marketing efforts with other online efforts in order to offer even more of what you do best.
Digital PR also opens up outreach opportunities. You can use social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook to reach out to existing fans while also reaching new ones through guest posts on blogs relevant to your industry.
When done right, digital PR will improve your search engine rankings which will drive traffic to your website.
Tips for Successful Digital PR
It’s no secret that if you have a great product or service to offer, word will get around and build up some buzz for you.
That’s one of the reasons why social media is such an important part of your marketing efforts today. However, building buzz alone won’t do much for you in terms of growth if no one notices your product – that’s where digital PR comes in.
The thing about digital PR (and all other forms) is that once you reach out to a potential partner, blogger, or another influencer who can mention your product online, there needs to be something enticing to entice them to take action on your behalf – to write a review or talk about your business with their audience in any way possible. Here are 3 tips to help increase your chances of finding partners willing to work with you:
- Be relevant: Keep an eye out for people talking about similar businesses and reach out after doing some research on what makes those brands different from yours. This will help ensure that they don’t already have someone working with them on reaching similar goals, and it also shows that you know more than just what they’re posting publicly online (you’ve done your homework).
- Look at outreach opportunities rather than targets: People always want to know exactly how to use digital PR best, but it isn’t an exact science; you need to view each interaction as an opportunity and not a set of actions designed solely toward getting coverage.
- Don’t spam: When contacting bloggers or other journalists with pitches, include details about why you think they should cover your story, but don’t spam them. If you’re not getting any response, try emailing press releases instead and sending samples instead of making follow-up calls/emails asking if they received anything yet.
How Do I Get Started?
First of all, you need to identify your target audience; who exactly do you want to hear from? Make a list of blogs, newspapers, or any other media that might be interested in your story.
Next, look into each media outlet individually and see if they have an online press room. Identify key staff members within each company (and their email addresses) so that you can reach out to them directly when necessary.
Also, check out sites like HARO and Response Source where journalists are proactively asking for content and comments to support their articles.
If you need help getting in front of influencers or amplifying your content efforts, get in touch with Vertical Leap today at 02392 830281 or [email protected]
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