Digital public relations (PR) is a powerful tool for businesses, shaping how their brand is perceived online. It involves creating captivating stories that draw attention to your products or services and deeply resonate with your audience.
Yet, digital PR is more than just generating excitement—it’s about building strong connections that turn passive viewers into curious prospects who are more likely to convert.
So, what exactly is digital PR, and how does it support your broader content marketing strategy and boost your brand’s success? We explore these questions and more in this blog.
What is Digital PR?
Digital PR (Public Relations) involves strategically leveraging online platforms to build and enhance your brand’s reputation while fostering a positive public image.
It focuses on managing communication and reputation, especially during crises, across various digital channels to ensure consistent and trustworthy brand representation. This approach boosts credibility and strengthens relationships with your target audience.
Traditionally, traditional PR primarily centred around print media, broadcasts, and live events. However, as the world has shifted to digital, businesses increasingly rely on digital PR to reach audiences through social media, search engines, and online publications. While traditional PR is still effective for broad outreach, it lacks digital PR’s precision and measurability.
Ultimately, the success of either strategy depends on the campaign’s objectives, target audience, and business nature. A combined approach, integrating traditional and digital PR techniques, often delivers the most comprehensive and impactful results.
The Benefits of a Digital PR Strategy
“I love some of the things I see from digital PR—it’s a shame it often gets lumped together with spammy link-building tactics. It’s just as essential as technical SEO, and in many cases, even more so.”
John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst at Google
There’s no better advocate for digital PR than Google’s own John Mueller. His statement highlights not only the importance of a strong digital PR strategy but also offers two key takeaways—or perhaps, warnings:
- Prioritise ethical link-building techniques: Focus on white-hat strategies and avoid spammy practices in your digital PR efforts.
- Treat digital PR with the same importance as other SEO elements: It’s crucial to view digital PR as an integral component of your overall SEO strategy.
A well-crafted digital PR strategy empowers your brand in several impactful ways:
- Boost Brand Awareness and Credibility
Digital PR does more than increase visibility; getting featured in reputable publications builds trust and showcases your brand as a credible industry leader. - Improve Search Engine Rankings
Digital PR is one of the top white-hat link-building techniques. It helps you secure high-quality backlinks, which signal to search engines that your site is authoritative, leading to better rankings and greater visibility. - Engage and Build Relationships with Your Audience
Digital PR allows you to connect with your market by sharing valuable and engaging content. This not only attracts new prospects but also strengthens relationships with existing customers. - Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website
By strategically placing backlinks within high-quality content, digital PR spreads positive information about your brand and drives organic traffic directly to your site.
Every purchase begins with a spark of curiosity, and digital PR is all about igniting that interest. A strong digital PR strategy boosts brand recognition and drives profitability by turning attention into action.
For many small to medium-sized businesses, partnering with a skilled content marketing strategist or a full-service digital marketing agency can be a smart move to optimise their digital PR efforts.
Should You Partner with a Third-Party Digital PR Agency?
If you have the resources to collaborate with a digital PR agency, it can be a game-changer. Beyond their expertise in delivering tangible results, these agencies often have established relationships with journalists and influencers, which can accelerate the launch of your content marketing strategy through effective digital press coverage.
However, if partnering with a digital PR firm isn’t feasible, there’s still a path forward. You can empower your in-house content marketing strategist to learn and implement digital PR techniques. While this approach may take longer and could potentially involve higher costs due to the learning curve and trial-and-error process, it can still be a valuable investment in building your team’s skills and capabilities.
Metrics to Measure the Success of Your Digital PR Strategies
Like any effective marketing initiative, a successful digital PR strategy requires patience, consistency, and a commitment to producing high-quality content. Given its focus on assets like blogs and website traffic, evaluating the impact of your digital PR efforts involves tracking the following key metrics:
Backlinks
Not all backlinks are created equal—quality is crucial. Focus on securing links from publications that your target audience regularly engages with. To assess the value of these links, set benchmarks for metrics like domain authority, page authority, or estimated traffic.
Unlike traditional link-building, digital PR prioritises generating high-authority passive links that grow over time. By creating highly shareable content such as statistics, case studies, and industry insights, you can attract links from authoritative websites, thereby increasing the value of your own content.
Share of Search (SERP Visibility)
Your website may only secure one position on a search engine results page (SERP) for a non-branded search term, but your brand can achieve greater visibility through mentions on other high-ranking sites. “Share of search” is a holistic metric that measures your brand’s online visibility across your website and external platforms.
For example, after a successful digital PR campaign, if your brand appears in 4 out of the top 20 results for a non-branded keyword, that equates to a 20% share of search. If a content marketing expert helps you expand to 8 out of the top 20 results, your share of search increases to 40%. The higher your share, the greater the chances that potential customers will discover and consider your brand.
Conversions
Conversions are the ultimate metric for assessing the effectiveness of digital marketing. However, you must first define what a conversion means for your business: a completed purchase, a newsletter signup, or a filled-out contact form. Once you’ve identified your conversion goals, tools like Google Analytics can help track them on your site.
With digital PR, focus on conversions driven by referral traffic—visitors who arrive at your website via direct links from other sites where your brand has been featured rather than through search engines or direct entry. Analysing how this referral traffic contributes to conversions will provide insights into the success of your campaigns and help you refine future digital PR strategies.
Summing up
As mentioned earlier, a well-executed digital PR strategy can elevate your brand by boosting awareness and recognition, improving search rankings, engaging with your target market, and driving high-intent traffic to your website. By generating interest, digital PR ultimately sets the stage for increased profitability.
If you’re ready to discover how digital PR can benefit your business, TSCA is here to assist. We specialise in white-hat link-building strategies and have helped our clients secure valuable backlinks from reputable websites.
