With intense online competition, B2B marketers must ensure they’re not missing a beat by positioning their companies in the best search engine, with the best ranking, for the best query – all of which can be done through the controlled and consistent use of digital PR.
Why is digital PR important?
- It can enable you to reach a wider audience: With 113 million blogs tracked online (Technorati, March 2008) and social networking sites emerging frequently, there are a range of new communities and individuals to engage with.
- It increases your visibility in the search engines: Brands who invest in developing their presence using various mediums (video, podcasts, blogs and other types of social media) will be repaid with greater visibility on search engines.
- Ignorance is not bliss: Without monitoring for noise and discussion around your brand online, you are missing out on the opportunity to leverage what’s being said online in your favour. There is also a risk that negative discussion online can blow out of proportion (particularly in search engines) if it is not dealt with appropriately.
How to create a digital PR programme
Follow these seven steps to create your own online PR campaign.
1. Push the right buttons
As with traditional PR there are certain elements that particularly appeal to online journalists and bloggers. This includes: celebrity; novelty; controversy; the quirky/unusual; real-life stories and discovery.
Controversy and celebrity are particularly effective in securing coverage online as online news sites will often post a story and then encourage users to debate the story through forums.
2. Know your competition
B2B marketing often involves a more complex selling process. As a result, staying ahead of your online competition is key to maintaining any type of advantage. Be aware of the online presence that your competitors have. Learn from your competition. Observe the online strategies your competitors use.
3. Take the interactive approach
With all online PR it is crucial to develop an interactive angle and consider how you engage your audience and create a dialogue. A key way to do this is to look into user-generated content opportunities. This can be as simple as encouraging users to submit videos and photos or write a review (third party endorsements are great value) to invite your audience to offer their views on new products or campaigns.
4. Become a thought-leader
Educational content is key to lead generation. Articles and white papers will help drive traffic to your site and generate visibility. Make sure you publish articles you write on your website so they are optimised by the search engines and distribute them to relevant websites that have an interest in your area.
Most importantly, tweak and recycle your content and repurpose articles for a variety of media, such as blogs, website content, e-newsletters and audio podcasts.
5. Think about SEO
Digital PR plays a big part in developing a site’s natural search rankings as it builds links into a site and places context around those links.
Optimise your press releases – think about what search terms you can incorporate and increase the number of mentions in the copy. Incorporating links into your website from press releases will also help the search engines decipher what your website is about and place more authority on it.
Video content can also be optimised so that it is found through search. Creating appropriate tags and titles for video makes it easy for people to download content to their own sites and provides a transcript to accompany a video – all increasing online brand visibility in the search engines.
6. Measurement
Measure the reach and impact of every online PR asset you create by imbedding hyperlinks back to your site. Use tracking parameters and analytics tools to track visitors to your site and more importantly, track what they do when they get there.
7. Choosing a supplier Look for creativity, an agency who can offer some new and fresh ideas. A full digital agency will be able to leverage a range of different techniques and tools to make your brand famous online.
Look for strong traditional PR skills alongside technical know how. Digital PR is still about building valuable relationships, good writing and communication skills and attention to detail. Check that the team you meet at your initial meetings are those who will work on your account, rather than less experienced graduates.
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