How Digital PR benefits your brand

Like it or not, the media truly does matter. The world you and I live in is saturated by the media

Rolling 24-hour news coverage, second-by-second breaking news stories on Twitter, newspapers on newsstands, independent bloggers. Regardless of the format it takes, the media is a continual presence in our lives.

This is why it’s crucial brands need to both be aware and engage with the media. In traditional times this was done through PR, and whilst the platforms and methods by which media portray news and content as changed, the premise of reputation maintenance and promotion has not.

You need to use digital PR for your brand for the two following reasons:

1.      The media shapes reality for consumers and businesses alike. People believe what they read and see providing it is coming from a reputable source. So good or bad you need to be part of it.

2.      If media is ill informed and your brand does not engage and set this perception right it can not only be detrimental to your brand, but can crucify it.

Engaging with the media is essential, but make sure you do it on your terms. To do this you need to know how digitisation of the media has changed how things work these days.

Days of journalists frantically writing to meet print deadlines have nearly gone. Multiple print editions (anyone old enough will remember the days of evening editions) have gone the way of the dodo. Today, thanks to one Tim Berners-Lee and his creation, the internet – the media has become an entirely different beast.

Now, journalists are under immense pressure to get clicks, drive traffic to ad-driven websites and produce stories that go viral. Newsrooms are understaffed and journalists have to file more and more stories than ever. The internet, and by extension, individual media consumption habits, has changed the way the media operates.

It’s a huge opportunity for brands like yours.

Why? Because journalists crave stories and you (or me on your behalf) can provide them.

What is Digital PR?

In simple terms digital PR is about creating a story. A piece of content, a video, an infographic, an interactive tool, that is so compelling, so shareable, so clickable that a journalist will write about it and link to it.

What is Content Marketing?

A very simple formula is:

Amazing story + that is beautifully told + pitched to the correct media outlets = media coverage + backlinks that boosts your SEO.

A what now?

A backlink… a link from a reputable company to your website, and the more reputable the link the more likely your prospective customers will click and find you!

SEO… I’ve written a whole article about this here, but again I like to make things simple, so SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it’s ultimately the way in which search engines such as Google decide where to put your website in the list when someone is searching for something. The better your SEO, the higher the top of the list your website will be and the more likely you will be to attract website visits from your target audience.

Brand awareness

You can spend years building your brand on social media and the broader internet, but a digital PR campaign can deliver massive brand awareness through their extremely wide readerships. So having your content and link to your website featured on the right platforms will increase your brand awareness with your target audience

It boosts your other digital marketing efforts

Today, especially since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, shopping has transitioned online. A huge number of purchase journeys begin on Google, so if you’re not on page one, you (basically) don’t exist.

Digital PR, by nurturing the domain authority of your website, helps improve the performance of your other digital marketing efforts. That technical SEO campaign you’ve been undertaking? It suddenly gets a boost. Those blogs you’ve been writing each week? They suddenly become more effective. Thanks to the ability of digital PR to grow your domain authority.

Considering Digital PR now?

There’s never been a better time to give digital PR a try. When you want to scale the attention that your brand is receiving quickly then get into the media. Get the media talking about you. Get the media linking to you. In other words, try digital PR.

If your business is ready for the next level of its growth and you’d like to speak to me for a no-obligation chat, then get in touch today.