Answering the question - What is digital PR? Here we breakdown this loaded question into it's official definition, that activities it involves, how to measure the success of these activities and who should be in charge of your digital PR. If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact us at https://toplinecomms.com/contact

1. What is digital PR?
Luke Budka
Head of Digital PR and SEO at TopLine Comms

2. Definition
Digital PR is the use of online trusted, independent, unbiased,
third parties to positively influence a brand’s target audience.

3. But what does
that mean?

4. Traditionally, there have been
two approaches:
Old school PR agencies releasing the print
media landscape is much smaller than is
used to be.
Solution?
Launching “digital PR” pages on their websites
and social channels.
Social media = digital PR, right?
SEO, SEO, SEO!
Promoted by SEO agencies, they consider digital PR
to encompass everything from citation building, to
generating backlinks and outreach activities.
More links pointing to your site from third party
sites = success, no?
OPTION 1 OPTION 2

5. There’s also a third approach…
And our personal favourite.
Brand awareness – it’s less about what digital PR is and more
about why it’s important.
It involves increasing your organic search engine rankings (i.e. on
which page and where you appear on a Google search).
This is a direct result of your click through rate (from your SEO
efforts) and the quality of the publications mentioning your brand
(and their contextual relevance).

6. So what are the activities
involved behind
Brand Awareness?

7. So what are the activities involved
behind Brand Awareness?
As any good B2B PR agency will say, the answer is debateable,
but we can all agree that is would be a series of specific activities.

8. So what are the activities involved
behind Brand Awareness?
As any good B2B PR agency will say, the answer is debateable,
but we can all agree that is would be a series of specific activities.
But which ones?

9. In terms of traditional Brand Awareness,
this includes…
Traditional Brand Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• Social media advertising
• SEO
• Online article placement
• Blogging
• PPC
• Video production
• Inbound marketing
• Review generation
• Email marketing

10. But, in order to avoid getting to broad,
I’ve applied the following statement:
All PR, online and offline, has to involve the use of a trusted,
independent, unbiased, third party.
Leaving the following activities controlled by the brand,
and the brand alone.

11. In terms of traditional Brand Awareness,
this includes…
Traditional Brand Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• Social media advertising
• SEO
• Online article placement
• Blogging
• PPC
• Video production
• Inbound marketing
• Review generation
• Email marketing
Brand-only Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• SEO
• Online article placement
(including reviews)
In terms of traditional Brand Awareness,
this includes…
Traditional Brand Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• Social media advertising
• SEO
• Online article placement
• Blogging
• PPC
• Video production
• Inbound marketing
• Review generation
• Email marketing
Brand-only Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• SEO
• Online article placement
(including reviews)

12. In terms of traditional Brand Awareness,
this includes…
Traditional Brand Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• Social media advertising
• SEO
• Online article placement
• Blogging
• PPC
• Video production
• Inbound marketing
• Review generation
• Email marketing
Brand-only Awareness
• Social media influencer relations
• SEO
• Online article placement
(including reviews)
Doesn’t that look much
more manageable?

13. Ok that’s good…
now what?

14. Ok that’s good…now what?
• How do we measure the results of these activities?
• What key performance indicators (KPIs) can we apply?
• How can we compare our outputs vs the outcomes?

15. Ok that’s good…now what?
Remember - A good digital PR result is therefore anything
that positively influences a brand’s social media or organic
search profiles, or any positive online media coverage.

16. Let’s take each of our
activities and see what
KPIs we can apply

17. Let’s take each of our activities and see
what KPIs we can apply
The trick is to put yourself in your client’s shoes…what questions
would they be asking you of your efforts?
How can you define the difference in your outputs and outcomes?
• Do you more retweets matter? (NO)
• Does ranking highly for keywords that don’t drive traffic and
leads count? (NO)

18. Social media influencer relations:
Here are some examples of digital PR KPIs for this activity:
• Have you increased your client’s target audience community size?
• Are you driving traffic from social channels to your client’s website?
• Have you created new brand advocates?
• Are posts about your client being shared by relevant social
communities/influencers?

19. SEO:
Here are some examples of digital PR KPIs for this activity:
• How many links have you built?
• How are you ranking for keywords?
• Have you managed to increase traffic from search engines to
your client’s website?
• Is increased organic traffic resulting in more leads?

20. Online article placement (including reviews):
Here are some examples of digital PR KPIs for this activity:
• Have you got your client more positive coverage that their competitors?
• Have you secured your client coverage in tier one online media targets?
• Have their key messages been pulled through into media coverage?
• Have you secured good reviews on sites that rank highly for keywords the
target audience will be searching for?
• Have you seen an increase in referral traffic from online article placement

21. So now you have your KPIs,
here’s the big questions…

22. So now you have your KPIs,
here’s the big questions…
How do you measure the success of digital PR?

23. How do you measure the success of digital PR?
Public relations has typically struggled because it’s hard to measure its contribution
to a business’s bottom line.
Interestingly digital PR doesn’t suffer the same problem.
Anything that’s directly responsible for increasing website traffic and conversions is
very valuable to a business and something they’ll continue to pay for.

24. How do you measure the success of digital PR?
Traditional PR agencies that are confident enough to leave outdated PR metrics in
the past where they belong, will often suggest PR success measurement is based
on how well the business is performing.
But by that logic if revenue and profit is down, then PR has failed.
However, this isn’t always the case. The PR campaign may have been excellent at
raising awareness with a target demographic but that demographic may have not
been the right target audience for the brand, or it was the right target audience, but
that audience wasn’t ready to buy.

25. How do you measure the success of digital PR?
By contrast, measuring the effectiveness of digital PR is relatively
straightforward, especially if you have access to the following tools:

26. Google Analytics
Using Google Analytics enables you to measure (amongst other things):
• Organic traffic levels
• Referral traffic from media websites
• Referral traffic from social networks
• Source and medium of client website goal completions
• Type of user your client’s website is attracting

27. Keyword tracking software – i.e. Moz
At the high end of the SEO spectrum you have tools like Moz which will help you
track your keywords and give you access to a wide range of SEO tools, like Open
Site Explorer, that come in very handy when running SEO campaigns.
On the other hand, if you are primarily interested in plain old keyword tracking then
you won’t go far wrong with a product like Authority Labs.

28. Social software
While social tracking tools like SharedCount have been used in the past to track all
social sharing from major social platforms, their effectiveness is now limited as it
has no access to Twitter and LinkedIn and limited Facebook access.
Truth is the best way to do this is to set up social tracking in Google Analytics —
Hootsuite’s guide is perfect for beginners.

29. Now that you have the tools to
measure your success, let’s revise
our definition of digital PR…

30. Now that you have the tools to
measure your success, let’s revise
our definition of digital PR…
“Digital PR is the use of online trusted, independent, unbiased, third
parties to positively influence a brand’s target audience.”

31. How does this all fit into
your marketing strategy?

32. How does this all fit into
your marketing strategy?
Good question!
To answer this you need to ask another question:
what is your digital strategy?

33. How does this all fit into your marketing strategy?
• If your audience is millennials or Gen Z and your strategy is ‘Be where they are’
then social media will be an important channel, and brand ambassadors
promoting products a great tactic.
• If, however, your strategy is ‘Get them when they’re ready to spend’ then SEO
will key along with PPC and other point of purchase marketing disciplines.

34. How does this all fit into your marketing strategy?
• If your audience is millennials or Gen Z and your strategy is ‘Be where they are’
then social media will be an important channel, and brand ambassadors
promoting products a great tactic.
• If, however, your strategy is ‘Get them when they’re ready to spend’ then SEO
will key along with PPC and other point of purchase marketing disciplines.
Identifying your target audience is key!

35. And finally…

36. And finally…
How do you pick a good digital PR agency?

37. How do you pick a good digital PR agency?
Now the tricky bit; how to pick a digital PR agency.
Questions you can ask any prospective digital PR partners include the
ones I’ve detailed as subheadings above.

38. How do you pick a good digital PR agency?
Now the tricky bit; how to pick a digital PR agency.
Questions you can ask any prospective digital PR partners include
the ones I’ve detailed as subheadings above.
But I’m not the law and their answers don’t
need to be identical to mine, just logical.

39. How do you pick a good digital PR agency?
Armed with the knowledge from this blog you should be able to have a
fairly informed conversation with any ‘digital PR’ agency and confidently
ask the question: What is digital PR?

40. How do you pick a good digital PR agency?
Armed with the knowledge from this blog you should be able to have a
fairly informed conversation with any ‘digital PR’ agency and confidently
ask the question: What is digital PR?
TIP: If you’re not 100% clear on what they’re proposing then ask them again
or drop them then and there; it’ll save you explaining to the board what
you’ve spent the marketing budget on at a later date!

41. Thank you!
If you’d like some more information on digital PR, or advice specific
to your business, drop the author of this blog post, Luke a line.
He’d be happy to help.