Sometimes a crowded news cycle can make it hard for your business to get noticed. When journalists are responding to non-stop breaking news that ranges from political developments to technology breakthroughs to celebrity antics, it can be hard to get noticed with traditional PR approaches to land earned media placements. That’s why it’s important to include Digital PR as part of your promotional arsenal.
Digital PR – or “Digital Public Relations” – combines PR strategy with Digital Marketing tactics to extend your reach and enhance your ability to cut through the noise of a busy news cycle. Digital PR Services are complementary to both traditional media PR and digital SEO. It can help amplify the power of your existing earned media and search placements to make your brand even more visible.
Let’s take a look at some Digital PR strategies that can help your brand stay in the conversation during a crowded news cycle.
Newsjacking
Newsjacking is a PR tactic that inserts your brand into the current landscape of news conversations. One of the most visible ways it does that is by offering your experts and executives to give quotes to media outlets about existing news items.
However, sometimes the news cycle is too fast and furious with breaking news to capture a journalist’s attention with your Newsjacking pitch!
When that’s the case, Digital PR can still help you stay in the conversation because newsjacking isn’t just about pitching major media outlets. Here are some other ways newsjacking tactics can help you stay visible.
Focus on Self-Publishing & SEO. Rather than pitching your relevance to major news topics to the media, Digital PR can focus on your own content.
A potential pitch can turn into a blog post – just like this one! Posts can be search engine optimized both for the short tail SEO of breaking news and the long tail of the keywords and phrases that create conversions.
Plus, more self-published content means more potential for your digital editorial calendar. One blog post can generate content to fuel newsletters, videos, or dozens of individual social media posts across different networks.
Newsjack Your Advertising. Sometimes the best place to trumpet your relevance to breaking news is via your paid media. Digital PR integrates PR practices with digital marketing, which means it can be flexible in re-routing a PR message from potential pitches into your advertising headlines.
When a big topic like electric vehicles or the price of groceries is dominating the minds of your potential customers, a clever add that references the current news environment can generate a lot of clicks and leads.
Create Relevant Resources. Does your brand have something specific to offer to the conversation about breaking news?
Your brand might be positioned perfectly to create resources like a calculator that estimates environmental impacts of consumer choices or an infographic of how domestic production avoids tarrifs.
Your Digital PR team can help you brainstorm and build these tools. They can drive more traffic to your site, and they might do more to capture media attention than a traditioanl pitch.
Focus on Evergreen Content
Powerful content about your own brand never goes out of style. If the temperature of national news is feeling too hot for your brand, it can be a sign that you should focus on your own evergreen content.
Crowded news cycles make a great time to work with your Digital PR team to expand your own brand story. that can include revising your About pages, highlighting your executives, doubling down on blog content and your social editorial calendar, or building a press release strategy to support your major product lines.
The goal is to create timeless content that focuses on the key topics and terms that will always be relevant to your brand, no matter what is going on in the news.
Your Digital PR team will focus on content that doesn’t have an expiration date. That not only keeps your website and social media fresh during a turbulent news cycle, but it gives you more content to pitch future PR opportunitis with when things settle down.
Building Social Proof for Your Brand
hen the news cycle is busy with dramatic developments, sometimes the best pivot is to focusing on the people that drive your sales.
Digital PR can be a powerful tool for building social proof for your brand. TrustPilot research has found that two thirds of consumers are more likely to go with a brand with social proof. They discovered that 85% of customers are more likely to convert if they see positive star ratings or reviews on a brand’s home page. And, a customer testomonial can make a difference for more than half of decision-makers.
Digital PR can help you build those trust signals when traditional pitching won’t cut through a packed news cycle. Your Digital PR team can focus on a campaign to generate reviews from existing customers, including pull-quotes from key industry players. Or, they can reach out directly to online influencers in your industry to generate high-value backlinks.
The goal is to focus on using social proof to establish new trust signals about your brand that helps to accelerate their conversion cycle. That way, when your PR does crack through the news cycle, you are ready to capture the prospects that come your way.
Hyper-Local PR & Advertising
When national or international news is full of non-stop developments, sometimes the best strategy is to go local – even for a national or international brand!
Local markets might not be as saturated by major news items as national media and major cities. A busy news cycle can be a good time to focus on a specific geographical area where your product is popular, where you have a physical prescence, or where you want to be seen by potential new customer base.
Local PR and advertising can take several forms. Here are three of our favorites.
Local Newsjacking. Rather than insert your brand into sensitive break news at the national level, pivot to newsjacking within a specific market. Local news loves having a pullquote with an expert opinion on a major local topic, whether that’s in broadcast, in print, or online.
Local Backlinks. A crowded national news cycle can be a good opportunity to build links within a specific market. Digital PR can help you get placements in local business directories.
Hyper-Local Advertising. An experienced Digital PR team can help you adapt your advertising strategy to be local, or even HYPER local – meaning that you’re not just focusing on a local market, but a specific geographic slice of that market. If a certain downtown area has a high concentration of decision-makers who might purchase your product, a digital display campaign can target them directly, capturing their attention and turning them into a re-marketing audience you can advance through your sales funnel.
Digital PR makes a difference during a busy news cycle!
Right now national and international news feels like it’s in constant upheaval. If your worried about keeping your brand visible during the constant barrage of breaking news, it could be time to add Digital PR services to your arsenal. Get in touch with us today to launch your own Digital PR strategy.
