How To Maximise Your Digital PR Campaigns

Public relations is the fine art of sculpting opinions and has evolved rapidly in recent years with the rise of the internet as a communication platform.

The current circumstances have made digital PR in the Thames Valley and across the UK even more vital than before. The average number of hours spent on social media in 2020 is set to total just under 36 days (863.8 hours)according to a report by GlobalWebIndex.

With so many eyes on digital media sources, ensuring your brand’s online reputation is strong is more vital than ever.

To make the most of digital PR campaigns, here are a few important factors to consider before, during and after a campaign.

Backlinks

Links that are gathered from reputable sources are the most important metric of success. They are to digital PR what AVE (advertising value equivalent, essentially how much a piece of coverage would have cost if it were an actual advert) was to the old world of PR.

PR is an effective way to get your brand appearing on websites with authority, and once you get the first one, it can significantly improve your coverage and web search optimisation.

Brand Recognition

The most valuable asset for any company online is their brand, and the more people see your brand the more they will trust it and see it as familiar.

The key to good PR both online and off is to associate your brand with certain values and use those associations to boost your profile. The main difference is now there is a tangible benefit through how search engines filter results.

Managing Feedback and Reputation

There is a quote by Bill Parcells which sums up how reputation management works: “You are what your record says you are.”

Your identity and brand are built on how you are perceived by customers and ensuring you have a pristine reputation is vital to effective PR.

Thankfully, most of how you can do this have never changed; focus on providing the highest quality service, put the customer first, go above and beyond and ensure any problems are fixed as quickly as possible. The first step is creating something to shout about after all.

The difference with digital PR is that your brand’s reputation is usually measurable through several sources where customers can provide feedback, both positive and negative. These include services like TrustPilot and Google Maps, but also social media platforms such as Facebook.

Managing your PR here is ever more important because if people have a problem with your service they will talk about it in a more public space.

Quickly responding and managing customer complaints not only stops a problem from escalating but also can turn a potential negative hit to your reputation into a positive interaction.

What you must also do is maximise the effect of your positive interactions, for example by asking happy customers to leave a review or a rating on social media or review aggregator services highlighting the positive experience they have received.