10 Yetis Insight Blog - What's Missing From Your Digital PR Campaign?

Often, brands think that they have nailed their digital PR campaigns and everything is ticking along nicely, but nice isn't always good enough.

In our opinion, as a fully fledged digital public relations agency, there is always something more that brands can be doing (or at least looking to do). An online PR campaign is a whole different ball game to a more traditional strategy that may involve targeting a few of the weekend national print supplements or sending a few product samples out here or there.

A decent digital PR agency will tell you that it's often hard to tell where public relations activity ends and search engine optimisation (SEO), a social media strategy and influencer outreach begins. That's because it's all much of the same now and the lines are blurred. Chances are, there are elements missing from your digital PR campaign.

Here are a few things in particular that should be on your checklist when planning your online PR strategy:

1.PR for SEO

If you have a web-based business and you're running a digital PR campaign (either in-house or through an agency), one of your top priorities should be trying to generate high quality links back to your (or your client's) website. This, my friends, is PR for SEO. What's it all about? Well, generating media coverage on websites with a high 'domain authority' (that's a score out of 100 and 100 is as good as it gets) and securing live, follow links to your website within that, looks pretty amazing as far as Google is concerned and the search engine Gods will reward you handsomely with better rankings. If you're ignoring SEO in your digital PR campaign, you're missing a trick.

2.Social Media Strategy

A digital PR campaign worth its weight in coverage will have a decent social media strategy to not only support it, but compliment it also. Digital PR is all about increasing brand awareness and presence online, amongst a key target audience. Social media is one of the best ways to get in front of a wide audience, so it makes sense to set up at least a Facebook and Twitter page for your or your client's brand. That's not enough though, as you have to make sure these accounts are active and any tweets or comments directed your way are engaged with. Social platforms are also great for reaching out to journalists, sharing good content and shouting about any PR activity that might be going on (such as sharing pieces of media coverage).

3.Video Content

Video is amongst the most-shared content out there. Journalists love strong video content that they can share within online articles and will make their pieces more 'sticky' in terms of keeping readers there for longer. If you neglect video, you're missing the chance to strengthen your digital PR campaign. Whether it's a talking heads style video with the head honchos at the company, ahidden camera style stunt that's going to get people talking, or just a clever video campaign, online video production is worth looking into and thinking about. If you don't have video PR capabilities in-house in terms of filming and editing, look to outsource it.

4.Influencer Outreach

Celebrities, bloggers, social media stars, journalists and even Joe Blogs on the street can be regarded as influencers; it's all to do with the powers of persuasion they hold over their followers and fans. If somebody has a huge Twitter following or loads of Facebook fans, who they engage with regularly, you can bet your bottom dollar that they're probably an influencer. These people can be targeted as part of an digital PR campaign. Influencer identification is an important process, but often tricky. It's not rocket science though; it's all about finding people that have influence over your target audience. For example, if your brand was an outdoor/adventure business, you'd know to target people like Bear Grylls, or adventure/travel journalists and bloggers. How do you target them? Well, if budget allows you can contact them or their publicist and pay for their time to jump on board with your campaign, or it can be as simple as @'ing them in a tweet to see if they retweet it to their followers.

5.Pub Factor

If your digital PR campaign is as dull and boring as watching paint dry, it's missing something. We always use the pub factor test; would it fire up a conversation amongst a bunch of friends down their local? If not, it's probably a bit of a rubbish idea. Something that has the pub factor doesn't necessarily have to be hilarious and the people in the pub don't have to be a bunch of uneducated louts that have no understanding of anything. Perhaps the people sat at the bar are a bunch of web developers out for a pub lunch, who would find your whitepaper on optimising web content really intriguing. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that if the group of people you're attempting to target will find whatever it is you are putting out there interesting, funny, intriguing or captivating, then you're doing something right. Digital PR campaigns are designed to be shared, any good digital public relations agency will tell you that. So, if it's shareable, it gets a big green tick from us.

There you have it folks; five things that might be missing from your digital PR campaign. Any questions, drop us a comment in the section below.