Digital PR Strategies the Drive Results

Digital PR strategy does not have to be complicated, but it does have to be smart to be fully effective. Smart digital PR focuses on a set of proven strategies then tweaks those strategies for the chosen market. Unsurprisingly, this begins with the brand and the marketer understanding their audience, knowing the right answers to key questions before they launch the campaign. Once that research has been done, the brand manager or PR pro should know:

•       What does our audience want that we can provide?
•       Who are the key influencers in that market?
•       Which niche online media channel offers the best potential results?
•       Who are the media personnel in that space we need to have a relationship with?
•       Where will our visitors come?
•       What will we do to earn their traffic and repeat visits?

Once these answers to these questions are in place, it’s time to build the campaign. While no campaign must have every single element that will be discussed here, it’s a good idea to have a combination of several of them all working together to build the brand and promote the digital PR campaign.

Good, authoritative articles published in reputable and popular online venues are a good place to start building brand awareness and brand reputation. Many of the most popular online resources are actively seeking quality content to share with their fans and readers. These opportunities allow brands and personalities to go from anonymous to authoritative in short order, if their content and presentation delivers.

As with traditional PR, successful digital PR requires good relationships with journalists and other opinion-makers in the brand’s appropriate niche or market segment. Once again, the goal here is to get earned media containing backlinks to content on the brand’s main site or social media pages.

In addition to traditional media figures, digital PR campaigns should include building relationships with key bloggers and other independent influencers in the space. Mentions or hat-tips on blogs and videos can go a long way toward enhancing and increasing brand awareness. This can be accomplished either through earned mentions or through paid affiliate programs where influencers receive referral compensation for driving traffic to a brand’s content or sales pages.

Implementing these campaign strategies is only step one. The next step is to use the right tools to measure various campaign metrics. Look for robust tools that measure referral traffic, website backlinks, domain authority, keyword visibility, and social media interaction. There are a lot of different tools on the market that offer these services. Test them out, check reviews and see which works best.