Digital PR

Mastering Digital PR: Strategies to Elevate Your Brand’s Online Presence

Blogs 01 Jan 2025

Businesses have endured a pandemic, shifted from traditional modes of communication to social platforms, and moved from conventional marketing to digital- all these changes are doing well for the market. People are now more interested in buying subscriptions to digital platforms than buying newspapers.

Companies have been benefiting from every innovation in the industry, but digital PR always hits the spot. Businesses are achieving their campaigns’ objectives to build reputation or increase brand awareness. This step will give you the desired results and improve the conversion rate, giving you an edge over your competitor. Digital PR campaigns also improve the return on investment of the other marketing efforts and help with lead generation.

So, what is digital PR? How can you make a strategy, and what are its advantages? These must be the questions arising in your mind, but do not worry; this blog is all about digital PR.

Explicating the Digital PR Concept

Did you know that more than 90% of web searches get their answers on the first page of the search engine? Among these, over 27% of people only click on the top result. Digital PR can be narrated as a marketing tactic executed by professionals and PR experts to increase the brand or personal online presence. This helps businesses in:

  • Increasing brand awareness
  • Improving website traffic
  • Growing social media follower count
  • Community building

All these goals are measurable and achievable. However, one thing that must be remembered is that digital PR differs from SEO strategies and should not be confused.

Digital PR vs. Conventional PR- What is New

In the Advertising market, 80% of total ad spending will come from digital sources in 2029. The new advancements in the industry do not demoralize conventional PR compared to digital PR, but when used alongside traditional PR, the campaign has even better returns. 

 

AspectConventional PRDigital PR
FocusBuilding brand familiarity through media, press releases, events, and public relations activities.Leveraging online content to gain backlinks, enhance SEO, and improve search engine rankings.
Tools and ActivitiesIssuing media notes, reporting to journalists, organizing press events, and engaging in public activities.Creating unique content like statistics, charts, and topical resources to attract backlinks and enhance online presence.
Primary ChannelsTraditional media, print publications, TV, and public events.Internet platforms, blogs, social media, and digital newspapers.
Key Metrics for SuccessPublic visibility, media coverage, and event attendance.Number and quality of backlinks, SEO ranking improvements, and online engagement.
ApproachFocuses on creating awareness and familiarity through face-to-face and direct interactions.Centers on online exposure and leveraging digital platforms for brand visibility and authority.

How to Develop a Digital PR Strategy?

A digital PR strategy is a comprehensive plan in which any online campaign activity will contribute to achieving goals such as brand building and improving SEO performance. Now that we know what it is let us begin developing the strategy.

Develop a Killing Buyer Persona

For any PR expert, gaining media coverage for the client is a goal that can be achieved by understanding the target audience. The easiest way to do this is to study the competitors. To make a buyer person, you need to answer the following questions:

  • Which digital platform did they use the most?
  • What is their favorite form of content?
  • What are their pain points?
  • What are their interests?
  • Which podcasts do they listen to more often?
  • What are their buying behaviors?

You will know where your audience is and why by answering these questions.

Buyer Persona Starter

Many questions will be answered during the persona-making process. The final product will be a tangible document you can share with your team to align the strategies.

Creating Relatable Content Based on Insights

This is the second step in developing the digital strategy after creating the buyer persona. If you have done the first part religiously, you already know how to map out the content in this section. Semrush, BuzzSumo, and Answer the Public are the few sites that will help you find the content to refine the strategy. This will enable you to plan the content formats as well, such as:

  • Listicles
  • Articles/blog posts
  • Podcasts
  • Videos and GIFs
  • Infographics and data-driven visualizations

Whatever format you decide on, data will take center stage in every digital PR campaign, but how you deliver to your audience will matter. A comprehensive aspect of digital PR is getting quantifiable value through quality, relevant backlinks. Using opposing hooks to spark debates and divide the audience into different opinions is always better- this tactic will increase shareability and engagement.

Personalized Email Pitches

This is the aspect of digital PR where traditional PR comes into play. Journalists receive tons of emails daily; you need to personalize your pitch to get a prompt response. Before doing this, you need to follow specific protocols, such as:

Establishing relationships with journalists is of utmost importance. However, do not send vague messages. You will not get anything but ignorance. To avoid this, thoroughly research them, learn about their likes and dislikes, and what they research on and love to write about. After following all these steps, send a personalized message to stand out.

There is no magic to writing catchy headlines, but this could be done by learning their interests. Research their website or LinkedIn, such as what type of headlines get their attention. Then, try to write for yourself by learning their patterns.

It is always best to incorporate multimedia to make the message more appealing instead of just mere paragraphs. In the message, you must tell what kind of benefit their audience will get if they visit the business website.  

Lastly, this aspect of digital PR is very slow and time-consuming, so you have to stay patient during this time.

Do not forget to build brand awareness

In 2025, authenticity will be the number one tool to be successful because people are over the dramatic and well-organized era, and now people want originality.  This will help businesses stand out from the crowd and increase brand awareness. Your digital PR and content strategy will bring results once you align the media outlets with audience preferences.

This way, you can establish the business as a thought leader by giving opinions on trending industry topics and bringing engagement to the audience.

Measure Your KPIs

Key performance indicators will give you insights into how your digital PR is going and what the results of your business are achieving. Based on the results, you can always improvise the strategy.  

Ideas for a Successful Digital PR Campaign

Digital PR comes in full circle, where the business has to produce and share press releases with digital outlets to initiate the campaigns. There are no hard and fast rules to make the right strategy, but you should know the crux and customize it for your business.

Here are three strategies that you can opt for as per the objective of your digital PR:

  • Reactive PR: This type of earned media comes under the umbrella of digital PR campaigns. Editors and journalists usually post questions related to the articles they are working on a site like HARO (help a reporter out) or a social media group. This is a goldmine for businesses to acquire good quality backlinks while responding to their question.
  • Distributing Press Releases: This is the most effective method. Sharing the news is one of the best and most traditional ways to get media coverage combined with a digital PR strategy. It is always the best idea to include the distribution press releases in your plan to get the attention the business deserves and get potential leads.
  • News Jacking: Having a digital PR strategy in place requires tons of precision and a quick process, so it is better to work with PR experts. Having a professional onboard will help you with newsjacking- a strategy in which businesses quickly act on industry-related news and tweak it as per their brand tone. This works effectively to put the company in the limelight.

Connect Your Business with the Best Digital PR Solutions

Digital PR is now more important than ever, given how cutthroat the market is in the current world. Not only that, defending and building your brand equity is crucial, but it can also provide a massive lift to your overall online exposure and SEO efforts.

Yet, creating the right digital PR campaign is as complicated as creating a perfect marketing strategy. This is where the tier-one experts make all the difference in the outcome.

If you are considering refreshing your digital PR strategy, here is what you should know. Why not contact Press Connect today to see how our specialists produce fascinating outcomes?