How to Create a Digital PR Strategy

A solid digital PR strategy is essential to standing out and making a meaningful impact. Whether you want to enhance brand visibility, improve online authority or engage with your target audience more effectively, a well-crafted digital PR plan can help you be successful. 

You deserve to have your brand recognised in the crowded marketplace, and that starts with a strategic approach tailored to your unique goals.

We’ll examine the components of an effective digital PR strategy that will resonate with your audience and drive measurable results. This article is an introduction the the strategies we use in our Digital PR Agency. 

What is a Digital PR Strategy?

Digital Public Relations aims to enhance your online presence and reputation through targeted public relations efforts in digital channels. 

Unlike traditional PR, which is primarily focused on print press releases and broadcast media, digital PR aims to leverage online platforms, including social media, blogs and online news outlets, connecting with audiences directly.

Establish Your Goals

Establishing clear, actionable goals is a foundational step to developing a successful digital PR strategy. Your goals guide your efforts, helping you focus on what you want to achieve and how to measure your success. When you’re establishing digital PR objectives, keep the following in mind:

1. Identify specific objectives: Start by pinpointing what you hope to achieve through your digital PR campaign and consider your broader digital marketing goals. For example, do you want to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, enhance your reputation or generate leads? Specific goals help you tailor your strategy accordingly.
2. Set measurable targets: Ensure your goals are quantifiable. For example, instead of simply aiming to increase brand awareness, set a target to achieve a specific percentage increase in media mentions or website visits within a certain timeframe. You can then track progress and determine the effectiveness of your efforts.
3. Consider timeframes: Establishing a timeline for your goals is crucial. Do you want short-term wins, or are you more focused on long-term objectives? Setting deadlines for your goals can create urgency and accountability, keeping your team focused on results.
4. Align with business objectives: Your digital PR goals should align with your overall business objectives. Whether you’re launching something, entering a new market or improving customer engagement, you always want to ensure your digital PR efforts are supporting broader company initiatives.
5. Stay flexible: While having clear goals is important, the digital landscape is always evolving. Be prepared to adjust your objectives based on real-time feedback and insights gained throughout your campaign. With flexibility, you’re ready to respond to new opportunities or challenges as they arise.

By establishing well-defined goals, you create a roadmap for your digital PR strategy that guides activities and sets the stage for data-driven decision-making.

Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience is non-negotiable when it comes to the success of your digital PR strategy. By identifying who your target audience is and where they engage with content, you can tailor messaging and outreach to maximise impact. Remember the following considerations as you work on better understanding your audience.

Identify your target audience

Start by defining who you want to reach. Consider demographics like age, gender, occupation, location and interests. Creating detailed buyer personas can help you visualise your ideal audience and ensure that your campaigns resonate with their needs and preferences.  

Determine where they hang out

It’s important to know where your audience spends time online. Are they active on social media platforms? Do they engage more with blogs, forums or industry-specific sites? Understanding these preferences can help you focus your outreach more effectively on the right channels.

Discover their news sources

Identify how your audience consumes news and information—are they primarily relying on traditional media, or do they prefer digital sources like podcasts or social media influencers?

Explore their interests

What topics capture your audience’s attention? What challenges do they face, and what solutions are they seeking? Surveys, social listening, and analysis of online behaviour can all give you insights into what resonates with your audience. This information can guide content creation so it is relevant and valuable.

Segment your audience

Depending on your business, your audience may include different segments with varying interests and needs. By segmenting it, you can craft personalised messages that elevate engagement and relevance.

Deep knowledge enables you to craft compelling narratives, targeted outreach and engaging content for a meaningful connection.

Create Your Asset(s)

Creating high-quality content assets is a key step in a digital PR strategy. These assets become the foundation for your campaigns to attract media coverage, engage your audience and build your brand’s authority.

What makes a Good Content Asset?

Relevance: A good content asset should relate directly to your audience’s interests and needs, addressing relevant topics, questions or challenges that resonate so that your target audience will find the content engaging and valuable.

Originality: Unique insights or perspectives can set your content apart from competitors. Original research, case studies or exclusive interviews can provide fresh information that bloggers and journalists want to cover. Work to offer something new and compelling to add value to the conversation.

Data-driven insights: Incorporating data and statistics makes your content more credible. Assets including well-researched data, infographics or surveys can provide journalists with needed information to support stories. Data-driven content is often more likely to attract media attention and promote link-building.

Visual appeal: Well-designed content is more likely to be shared and engaged with, so consider creating infographics, videos or interactive tools that are visually appealing and easy to consume. Visual assets can convey complex information more effectively and attract a wider audience.

Shareability: Your content should be shareable across various platforms. Ensure it’s formatted for social media and includes elements like social sharing buttons, quotes and key takeaways. When your asset is highly shareable, you’re giving it a boost in reach and potentially earning high-quality backlinks.

Call to action (CTA): Every good content asset should include a clear CTA that guides your audience to the next step, whether that’s visiting your site, signing up for your newsletter or engaging with your social media.

SEO: Incorporate relevant keywords and optimise your content for search engines to drive traffic organically, elevating the chances of content being discovered.

Craft Your Pitch

Crafting an effective pitch communicates your content assets to journalists. A well-structured pitch can grab attention, generate interest and lead to media coverage.

1. Personalise your approach: Tailor each pitch to the specific journalist or outlet you’re targeting. Research their previous work, interests, and writing styles to make sure your pitch resonates with them. Personalising your approach shows you’ve taken the time to understand their audience, and that’s going to make your pitch hold more appeal.
2. Have a strong subject line: Your email’s subject line is your first impression, so make it count with concise, engaging language that summarises the essence of your story or the value of your asset.
3. Start with a hook: To get attention, begin your pitch with a hook, such as a bold statement, surprising statistic or question related to your content.
4. Present the value: Clearly articulate your content asset’s value and explain why it’s relevant to the journalists’ audience and how it contributes to ongoing conversations. Highlight unique insights, data or perspectives that set your asset apart.
5. Keep it concise: Journalists have limited time, so keep your pitch brief and to the point, aiming for conciseness and clarity. Provide the essential information and make it easy to grasp key points quickly.
6. Include supporting information: Attach your asset or provide a link to it. You don’t want anyone to have to dig for information. Give them the needed resources.
7. End with a clear call to action: Conclude your pitch with an invitation to take the next step. This could be requesting a meeting, offering to provide more information or suggesting an interview with a relevant spokesperson.  
8. Follow-up: If you don’t hear back in a week or two, consider sending a polite follow-up email.

Build Your Outreach List

Creating a targeted outreach list is part of building a digital PR strategy because a well-researched list helps ensure your pitches reach the right people—those who are most likely to resonate with your content and share it with their audiences.

Identify relevant journalists and influencers

Start by identifying journalists, bloggers, and influencers who cover topics related to your content asset, industry, or brand. Look for people who have previously written about similar subjects.

Use media databases

Consider using media databases like Cision, Muck Rack or Prowly, which provide comprehensive lists of journalists and their contact information. These tools allow you to filter your searches by topic, publication and even social media presence.

Research publications

Identify key publications aligning with your target audience and look for journalists who frequently contribute to these outlets. Pay attention to niche publications that could have dedicated audiences interested in your content.

Engage on social media

Social platforms are valuable for discovering and connecting with journalists. Follow them, engage with their content and participate actively in relevant conversations to make them more receptive to your outreach.

Compile contact information

Create a spreadsheet to organise your outreach list, including each contact’s name, publication and email address, as well as phone number, if available and any notes about their past articles or interests.

Segment your list

Depending on your content asset, you should segment your outreach list into categories for more tailored pitching.

Monitor engagement

As you build your outreach list, keep track of your interactions with your contacts. Note when you send pitches, follow-ups or feedback. Doing this will help you maintain relationships and refine your approach for future campaigns.

Regularly update your list

The media landscape is always changing, so periodically review and update your outreach list to ensure relevance and the most current information.

Track the Results

Tracking the results of your digital PR campaigns helps you understand how effective they are and refine your strategy.

Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Before launching your campaign, establish clear KPIs that align with your goals, such as media coverage, backlinks, social engagement, and website traffic.

Use analytics tools

Examples include Google Analytics, SEMRush or Ahrefs. Track campaign performance with these tools to gain insights into traffic sources, user behaviour and the impact of media coverage on your site’s SEO performance.

Monitor media mentions

Set up Google Alerts or use media monitoring tools to track mentions of your brand across platforms.

Analyse engagement metrics

On social media, you can track engagement metrics like reach, impressions and interactions with your posts. Use insights from each platform to understand the content that resonates with your audience most and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Evaluate the quality of backlinks

Not all backlinks are equal, so use Moz, Ahrefs or similar tools to assess the domain authority (DA) of sites linking to your content. It’s best to focus your efforts on getting links from high-authority sites to maximise the SEO benefits of your digital PR efforts.

Collect feedback

Gather qualitative feedback from journalists and influencers you’ve pitched so as to learn more about how your pitches were received and what could be improved for future campaigns.

Create a reporting system

Develop a structured reporting system to consolidate your findings. Summarise your KPIs and insights into any lessons learned from each campaign so you can share them with your team and stakeholders.

Adjust and optimise

Use collected data to refine your digital PR approach. Identify the most successful strategies and consider scaling those for your future campaigns. Be willing to pivot or adjust tactics based on insights gained from your tracking.

Want to Work with an Experienced PR Team?

The world of digital PR can be complex, but you don’t have to do it alone. Partnering with an experienced PR team can elevate your campaigns, ensuring you effectively reach your audience and achieve your goals.

Ready to take your digital PR efforts to the next level? Contact us today to explore how we can work together.