The lines between digital, SEO, social and PR are becoming increasingly blurred, which can mean it’s tricky to know exactly what you expect from a PR campaign. Digital PR is one of the fastest growing services within the PR world, which is no surprise as there are 5.35 billion internet users worldwide which is 66.2% of the global population, as of January 2024.  

In this blog, we will explore what digital PR is, how it can be implemented and how you can report on campaign achievements. If you’re not currently using digital PR to drive your brand awareness, this is the blog for you.  

What is digital PR and how does it differ from a traditional PR?  

The truth is, digital and ‘traditional’ PR don’t really differ a great deal. Both strategies focus on increasing awareness and visibility of a brand, the main difference is digital PR relies solely on online channels. This strategy maintains the original goals of traditional PR as both focus on engaging the target audience.  

In the fast-growing digital sphere, it is vital businesses remain visible and relevant to their target audience. Through the use of digital PR, brands are able to communicate with their potential customers through social media, the internet and online media outlets… all of which help to spread brand awareness to a wider audience.  

Digital PR campaign planning:  

As part of your strategy planning, it is important to know what you want to achieve from the use of digital PR. You may ask yourself the following questions… 

• Do I want more users visiting my website?  

• Do I want to increase social media followers?  

• Do I want to position my brand as a thought leader?  

• Do I want to increase my brand visibility?  

• Do I want to engage customers?  

Once you know your goals, finding the right method to reach your targets and record your metrics, becomes a more streamlined process.  

When determining the best approach to your digital content, it’s important to consider the below… 

• Do I want my campaign to be data driven?  

• Do I want my content to come in the form of blogs, opinion pieces, online media coverage or social media?  

• Which social media platforms do I want to utilise within my campaign?  

• Do I want to keep my content style more traditional, or do I want to branch out into podcasts and videos?  

 How is digital PR effectively utilised?  

Digital PR can be implemented alongside traditional PR, or it can be used as a sole strategy within a campaign.  

While traditional PR is perfect for supporting businesses focused on creating a strong presence and voice within the general press, niche print publications, TV and radio, digital PR creates the opportunity for wider spread, more easily accessible content.  

Digital PR taps into fairly accessible and broad publications and platforms, which means the audience reach naturally increases. This strategy is focused on creating Search Engine Optimised content that will captivate and maintain user engagement providing the perfect opportunity to create quicker, bigger (potentially global) and stronger awareness and reputation.  

But digital PR isn’t about just pushing online content into the ether, it is a strong strategy that has the potential to improve website traffic, increase brand visibility and improve your position as a thought leader within your industry.  

Through the use of high-quality backlinks, and social media mentions, this PR strategy opens a number of doors not only for businesses but for all online users. Media backlinks are like gold dust in the PR world, leading users directly to your website. However, even without this inclusion, online coverage raises brand awareness and directly communicates with your target audience, naturally increasing brand interest.  

How can digital PR be measured?  

Above we have discussed the opportunities digital PR presents, but how can these be measured?  

• Website traffic  

If you’re focused on increasing website traffic through your digital PR, Google Analytics will be the primary reporting platform. Google Analytics reports on the number of users that visited your website within given time periods, how these users interacted, where they spent their time on your website and much more.  

• Domain authority  

If you are digitally driven and looking to get your company news in the biggest industry titles, domain authority will be your guiding light. Domain authority describes a websites relevance for a specific subject area or industry. The relevance has a direct impact on its ranking by search engines, which means this is a great way of analysising whether a website/ publication is the right place for your content.  

• Coverage tracking  

However, if you’re more focused on increasing brand awareness and visibility, media monitoring platforms and Google Alerts will be your best friend. There are many media monitoring platforms, such as Agility, but essentially, they all let you follow KPIs and assess the impact of the PR. Without these, you’ll find tracking your campaigns a very time-consuming task. 

• Social media  

Lastly, social media. In order to analyse the success and reach of your social media content, you’ll have to focus on the social media metrics each post, or a group of posts, achieves. This can be done through social media posting platforms, such as Agorapulse, or through the backend of social media platforms. Metrics such as impressions, social shares, audience reach and audience profile are all tangible measurements.