Digital PR to Create Brand Awareness
Digital PR marketing refers to a
digital marketing tactic involving sharing an online press release (PR). While traditional press releases often gained traction thanks to their spread in an industry magazine and via various new channels, today’s press releases have gone almost completely digital.
What Exactly is Digital PR?
Online PR marketing is an excellent way to build brand awareness, and it works similarly to other online marketing efforts because it not only helps you with your
link building efforts but, when optimized correctly for SEO best practices, can help your brand become easily found by those looking for solutions to their problems.
You’ve likely come across examples of online PR marketing more often than you think. For example, blogs that focus on brand announcements are often shared across the web to spread awareness of the announcement to various audience members. You’ve likely also come across these digital PR notices when browsing your favorite online news sources. There are even dedicated websites that do nothing more than share online PR notes/letters to help businesses build brand awareness.
How Does Digital PR Work?
While some forms of blogs can pass as online PR, a more traditional approach to
digital PR marketing includes:
1. Drafting an online press release that covers all pertinent information and includes links to your website where appropriate.
2. Networking and sending outreach messages with relevant journalists and industry officials to see if they’d be willing to post your online PR or otherwise share information from it with relevant links to where readers can get more information.
3. Networking with social media influencers to continue further spreading awareness to audiences you may not otherwise have access to.
Of course, you’ll want to make sure you are taking the time to adequately research each individual or business you decide to reach out to. Otherwise, you could be wasting your time talking to someone who has zero interest in what you have to share, or you could be putting your time into an audience that will not benefit from your news.
5 Benefits of Digital PR
If you’ve never looked into online PR marketing, then you’ll want to check out these five benefits:
1. Boost Website Traffic
Traditional press releases were often shared via mass printing, and online PR marketing utilizes online platforms when sharing their press release. That means you can use content marketing best practices, such as keyword optimization and link inclusion, to help lead readers back to your website for further information.
That means, with the right links, you may see a boost in your overall website traffic as more people share your online PR with their audience members. Even better, that often leads to your brand’s
introduction to a much greater audience than you’d likely reach otherwise.
2. Improve Your SEO Ranking
Since an online press release is another form of online content, if you are actively practicing both off-page and
on-page SEO best practices, you could even boost your SEO ranking as well.
For instance, as part of your on-page SEO, you should be optimizing your:
- Content
- Title/meta tags
- Image metadata
- Page hierarchy
As for your off-page SEO, you want to make sure that those who are sharing your only PR are taking the time to include any links that you originally included within the content, as this will help you with your external link building.
3. Lead Generation
With industry experts, journalists, and relevant social media influencers helping you with your online PR marketing, you will likely see your lead generation increase as more people are exposed to your content.
As leads start to come in, you want to make sure you are taking plenty of time to nurture them to prove that you were put in front of them for a reason. For instance, you can utilize a variety of digital marketing practices to retarget visitors who only glanced at your page after following a link, collect emails to start a conversation and reach out to personally say thanks to your readers.
4. Create Conversations and Boost Online Engagement
As more people come across your online PR activities, you may notice an increase in your social media following or subscribers. Remember, you want to make sure you acknowledge them with thanks; however, you also want to make sure you are taking the time to answer questions and get involved in conversations that appear not only on your site or profile but also on those who have shared your online press release as well.
The more you join in on the conversation and provide your audience with answers to questions or other resources, the more likely they are to start trusting what you have to say, and the closer they will follow your business/activities.
5. Generate Authority
Finally, as you start to gain others’ trust and start working on building those vital relationships, the more authoritative your brand will seem. Not only that, but your audience will notice who takes the time to collaborate and share your online PR activities, and the more authoritative they are, the more likely that they will see you as an authoritative figure.
See How Digital PR Can Fit into Your Digital Marketing Plan
Digital PR is a tactic that most brands don’t take the time to understand because they are so focused on other digital marketing strategies.
If you’re wondering how CadenceSEO could help you implement online PR marketing into your digital strategy, contact us today for more information.
