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From Classic
to Digital PR

Digital PR: the further development of classic public relations work

Digitalisation has changed classic PR. PR professionals face the challenge of combining the elements of storytelling and content creation with new digital requirements, such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and content marketing. To integrate digital PR into your work in a meaningful way, you should ask yourself the following questions:

  • How can I tap into the great potential of digital channels for businesses?
  • How can you reach the target groups of the digital space?
  • What opportunities do companies have to discover new markets through digital PR and thus enhance their reputation?

This blog post describes the most important strategies, tools, building blocks and goals of digital PR.

What is digital PR? – An attempt at a definition

There is no universally valid definition to this question. The consensus is that digital PR takes up the elements of public relations and less of press relations. In contrast to classic PR, online PR relies less on publications in classic media such as newspapers or print magazines. Rather, it is about using a wide variety of digital channels, such as online magazines, social media channels, forums, blogs or specialist portals.

Digital PR opens up great potentials in this context: In addition to the multiplication effects of online communication, companies can communicate with the public without the diversions via traditional media. On the one hand, this offers the opportunity to independently develop new markets and target groups. On the other hand, direct communication should ensure the highest level of editorial competence. In the next section, we will introduce you to some tools that make working with digital PR easier.

With the right strategy to PR success

As in classical PR, it makes sense to develop a clear strategy. The process of digital PR is similar to that of other communication measures: Analysis, conception, planning, production, distribution and reporting. The first step in the analysis is to define the channels on which your target group mainly spends time. According to these specifications, you should find out about the topics your target group consumes. Finally, content creation is about how it is prepared in terms of tone and form. An article in an online magazine, for example, differs in this respect from an article on social media platforms. Topics, stories and creativity should form a unit in order to reach as large a part of the target group as possible. The increasingly rapid distribution of content, which can be played out universally, creates the virality of an article.

To analyse the existing content and get an overview of topics and channels, it makes sense to use one of the various tools. Based on the monitoring results, a concept is created and then the measures for the individual channels are planned.  You don’t have to do this work alone. Get external advice for the implementation of your strategy and the creation of the content: As a PR agency with more than 20 years of experience in the German and global media environment, we are happy to support you. Together with you, we will develop the right strategy for your digital PR.

 

Creativity and Seeding – The Content and Playing Out of Digital PR

To make your content stand out from the crowd, you can also use data analysis with the help of open data or surveys. Make sure that the content – be it a blog article with pictures and graphics, a white paper, an infographic or a video – is useful for your target group. This means, for example, knowledge transfer, advice or entertainment.

Once the content has been created, it is distributed in a targeted manner, also known as seeding. The main thing here is to understand where your target group is and to play out the content accordingly: This could be in search engines, on news portals, on topic and specialist portals, in question and advice forums and on social media. Here, too, it is worth using one of the tools presented to further optimise your planning. Finally, as in classic PR, you should build up a personal network to have more leeway to play out your topics on the appropriate channels.

A comparison of selected tools for digital PR

Communication technologies (KommTech) play an important role within digital PR. The use, functions, costs and integrations of the individual tools vary:

Tool / Functions Costs Integration
Brand24

• Links

• Impact management

• Reporting and statistics

• Dashboard

• Data import / export

• E-mail notifications

• Trend analyses

• Social media integration

• Mobile notifications

 • from 60 €/month (free trial, subscription) • Slack
Cision

• Activity Dashboard

• Campaign analyses

• Website analytics

• Trend analyses

• Reputation management

• Preparation of press releases

• Digital Asset Management

 • on request (subscription) • none
Meltwater

• Alarm function / notifications

• Automated publishing

• Digital Asset Management

• Content Management

• Dashboard

• Communication management

• Manage press clippings

• Project management

• Web tracking

• Website analytics

• Target group targeting

• ROI tracking

 • on request (free testing) • none
Tool / Functions Costs Integration
Wiztopic

• Articles in the authors’ database

• Preparation of press releases

• Social media integration

• Digital Asset Management

 • on request (subscription) • Digimind

• Hootsuite
• LinkedIn for Business
• Mailjet
• Meta for Business
• Yammer
Newswire

• Articles in the authors’ database

• Content Management

• Dashboard

• Contact management

• Press monitoring

• Target group targeting

 • from 200 €/month (subscription) • Google Analytics 360
Outbrain

• Automated publishing

• Content Management

• Dashboard

• Email marketing

• Engagement tracking

• Geotargeting

• Web traffic reporting

• Social Performance Management

• Lead capture

• Lead generation

• Conversion tracking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 • from 20 €/one time • none

The building blocks and goals of digital PR

Long-term and short-term goals of digital PR go hand in hand: This way, you can combine the long-term development of new target groups and markets with the short-term goals of online marketing, such as generating enquiries and creating interactions. In the process, digital PR is becoming increasingly networked with other communication disciplines, with the boundaries becoming blurred.

For example, digital PR promotes search engine optimisation: the objective is to obtain digital mentions or backlinks with the dissemination of content. Backlinks, in turn, have a significant share in the positioning of a topic in the search results and are thus directly related to the visibility of a company or product on Google. But also the density of relevant keywords that are brought into a digital context with the company improve the ranking on Google.

 

Conclusion: Discover new markets with digital PR

Digital PR is on the rise and combines disciplines such as SEO or content marketing with classic PR. The editorial content enables companies to penetrate new markets and increase their reputation. In order to use digital PR as profitably as possible, you should acquire skills in content seeding, social media, but also in the SEO area on topics such as backlinks, keywords and content optimization.

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