What's in store for this edition:
This Episode Sponsored by - The Digital PR Observer
Want to stay up to date with the latest Digital PR news and resources? The Digital PR Observer Newsletter is your go to resource!
Each week you’ll get:
The latest new blogs and resources
5 quick fire tips to enhance your PR activity
5 data sources you can use for PR campaigns
Analysis of 5 successful PR campaigns
Digital Public Relations Starter Guide
Why Digital PR Matters
In honor of my very first sponsored episode, thank you Matt Seabridge of the information-packed Digital PR Observer, I decided to dive a little deeper into digital PR. In reality a large part of our PR efforts fall into the Digital PR realm so it’s worth examining even more.
Why does it matter? "Great Digital PR can build a brand’s online visibility, taking you from a minor competitor to an industry leader. It can reshape your online reputation, controlling the narrative and directly influencing your audience’s decision making," said Ben at Digital PR Tips. With all that it can do, it’s definitely worth learning more about it.
What is Digital PR?
Digital PR is building brand awareness, protecting reputation and establishing credibility on-line through earned-media, high-quality backlinks, and expert commentary.
How Digital PR differs from Traditional PR
The biggest difference between traditional PR and digital PR is the channels or vehicles that your message is delivered in, and the ability to measure the performance.
Digital PR | Traditional PR |
|---|---|
Online news site, blogs, podcasts, social media | Newspapers, magazines, TV and radio |
Track clicks, backlinks, web traffic, and conversions | Subjective metrics, harder to track |
Coverage access indefinite | Limited longevity |
Encourages dialogue (comments, shares, engagement) | Typically one-directional |
Improves SEO/AIO impact | No SEO impact unless print version also has digital counterpart |
Strategies and Tactics
We’ve covered these tactics in depth and I encourage you to use all you have in your arsenal to get coverage.
Media Pitching means you reach out to journalists, bloggers, and podcasters with story ideas they'll want to cover. The key is offering something genuinely newsworthy—not just a sales pitch. Make them personalized, relevant, and provide real value to their audience.
How to do it: Research journalists who cover your industry, read their recent articles, and craft pitches that align with their interests. Keep it brief (under 200 words), lead with the most compelling angle. Make it easy for them to say yes!
With Expert Commentary and Thought Leadership position yourself or your team as industry experts by providing commentary on trending topics. When journalists need an expert quote for a story, they turn to people with whom they have built relationships with or they put out a request from various platforms like HARO, SOS and Qwoted.
How to do it: Respond to relevant journalist queries with thoughtful, non-promotional wisdom. You can also proactively reach out to journalists covering topics in your area of expertise.
Data-Driven Content and Original Research: Journalists love original data because it gives them something exclusive to share with their readers. Creating studies, surveys, or data visualizations can earn significant media coverage and backlinks.
How to do it: Look at data your business already collects, conduct surveys using tools like SurveyMonkey, or analyze publicly available datasets to uncover interesting insights. Present your findings with compelling visuals and a dedicated landing page.
Newsjacking means jumping into trending news stories by offering timely commentary or connecting your brand to current events. When done right, it can generate massive coverage quickly—but timing is everything.
How to do it: Set up Google Alerts and monitor social media for trending topics relevant to your industry. Prepare expert quotes in advance for predictable events (like industry conferences or awareness days), and be ready to respond quickly when breaking news happens.
Guest Blogging and Contributed Articles Writing articles for other websites in your industry helps establish your expertise while earning valuable backlinks. The key is providing genuinely useful content—not thinly veiled advertisements.
How to do it: Identify popular blogs and publications your target audience reads. Study their content style, pitch relevant article ideas to their editors, and deliver high-quality, actionable content that adds value.
Digital PR might seem complex, but at its core, it’s about telling stories that your audience wants to hear. You don't need to be a PR professional to get started—you just need a newsworthy angle, genuine value to offer, and the willingness to build relationships.
“Success is sum of all small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
Do this now: Have you completed your first campaign? Get started by:
Step 1: Define Your Goal
Step 2: Identify Your Angle
Step 3: Research Your Targets
Step 4: Create Your Assets
Step 5: Write your Pitch
Step 6: Follow Up
Step 7: Measure and learn
FAQ
Q: Do I really need to research and personalize every pitch?
A: Mass-emailing identical pitches to hundreds of journalist will at best get you ignored, at worst they will block emails coming from you and probably make fun of your thoughtlessness on social media for all to see. So yes, personalize every pitch.
Get PR techniques from recent news.
Newsworthy
HelloFresh and Paramount+ Collab
HelloFresh UK and Paramount+ UK, are teaming up for what it is calling a first-of-its-kind collaboration that fuses food, film and television. The program will feature more than 50 HelloFresh recipes inspired by Paramount+ titles such as Yellowstone, Star Trek, Mean Girls and Dexter.
We love a good collaboration. What do you need to make sure your collab is a success?
Essential strategy:
Joint press release is essential for collaboration
Plan well in advance
Pitch to the right reporter
Produce good content, High quality images are non negotiable
Get creative and make it visually interesting, unique, fun
💫 Pro Tip: Reporters will love you even more if you share content such as your high quality images, videos, graphics, hashtags, product descriptions and links to your owned media. You can provide to them directly or make them available on your website’s newsroom.
✍️ Key PR Takeaway: Marketing, social media and public relations departments should all be involved when there is a large scale collaboration.
Useful PR Resources.
🧰 TOOLKIT
BuzzStream List IQ
List IQ is an AI-powered tool for building hyper-targeted media lists from a Google News search.
I preach all the time that having an accurate list of journalists (Media List) is so important when pitching the media. BuzzStream List IQ helps you accomplish this.
Why I love it:
Ease of use
TIME SAVINGS!
Accurate and most current information
How it works: Start by downloading the Chrome extension in your browser. Open up Google News and search for your topic (i.e. “ny fashion week). Select all of the information that you want ListIQ to find and start adding any relevant URLs to your list. Then click “Generate Sheet,” and you’ll get a Google Sheet or CSV file with a media list. Easy peasy!
Thanks List IQ - you just saved me hours of tedious work by building a media list!
Attention Seeker of the Week
Archie
Archie, the 6-month-old Labradoodle just loves attention. He’s still figuring out all the antics he can get into, but so far his favorite is chewing on paper and on shoes. Just as long as he doesn’t chew the Jimmy Choo’s! Archie’s mom is the newest mentor with the fabulous SOS Support our Scholars, a nonprofit that supports extraordinary young women in their college journey.
This episode is packed full of links and tips. I can’t wait to see what your latest campaign success you have.
Until next week, keep your shades on and stay cool.
Your fellow Seeker,
Keren
🕶️
