Until a few years ago, the industry saw PR and SEO deployed as two different and irreconcilable factions: on the one hand, organizers of appetizers, on the other hand, technical geeks, throwing smoke in the eyes of one other. Fortunately, nowadays this dichotomy no longer exists, and indeed, the collaboration between Digital PR and SEO becomes increasingly active and fruitful within an effective digital strategy.
But what does Digital PR consist in and how can it benefit the ranking and trust of your site?
Outreaching and relationship: cultivating contacts
The keyword when talking about online PR is “relationship”, possibly long-term and based on mutual esteem. Outreaching is the perfect starting point. However, once we have established a first contact and hired the bloggers in our project, it is essential to grow this professional liason to create a small pool of available and highly accurately selected contacts, which can gradually grow and become trustworthy over time.
It sounds easy, but it is not. A good contact pool is really the first priceless value of a Digital PR Manager. Building a lasting and profitable relationship means knowing how to sell your project in the best way, providing impeccable and easy to follow briefs while leaving stylistic freedom to the influencer, but also always acting in complete transparency in the negotiation phase of the deal. And above all, it means to know your interlocutor and respect his professionalism. Here is a brief list of errors to avoid in order not to jeopardize a possible good contact immediately:
- Sending generic emails to multiple recipients. Even if it will take some time, try to search blogger profiles: after all, who does not like being called by name instead of receiving a “Dear…“?
- Failing to understand the scope of action. If you are carrying out a beauty project for a female cosmetics company, do not assume that any blogger will want to be involved. There are editorial lines and personal choices and there are people who deal exclusively with fashion, for example, mothers’ products, natural cosmetics and more… sending a hasty email will immediately give the idea that you have not even studied the case and reviewed the website carefully where you would like to see on your content published;
- Failing to understand the level of the project. If you are working on a small startup in the food industry, you will hardly be able to involve famous, world-known influencers. Even in this case, if you overdo it your reputation could suffer it;
- Offering visibility…no one works for free. Being a blogger is a job and, as such, should be paid. Obviously, there are exceptions related to the previous point: be careful to how business relations are regulated even in the domain of influencer marketing. Overall, an honest fee is always appreciated and guarantees quality of work;
- Sending too strict briefs. Writing is all about creativity: of couse, you should be able to guide the influencer to follow the brand guidelines that you promote, and you should also provide SEO support on the content. Do not overdo it though: your relationship could be damaged and its content could be less spontaneous;
- Disappearing after publishing. This is really counterproductive: once the article is online, you should contact the collaborator to thank him. This is really common sense and is the basis for cultivating relationships.
Brand awareness and link earning
We have established the group of bloggers to involve, provided the brief, supported the preparation of the material and monitored publications: what have we gained from the activity in a whole? Assuredly, mixing PR attitudes with SEO norms can bring great benefits, both from the brand awareness and from the acquisition of spontaneous links and authority point of view.
Digital PR is able to overcome the boundaries of a more “old-fashioned” link earning strategy: through relations and word of mouth, influencer publishing, and sharing on their social profiles, a very valuable buzz is generated that increase the possibility of being linked again in a completely natural way thus increasing the referral traffic to our site.
A cross-industry activity, which just requires a bit of creativity
Bloggers and influencers are the masters of the web in many different areas: surely, food and fashion remain a privileged sector, where it is easy to find a large number of contacts of different levels, ready to engage in their Digital PR activities. But other industries might not have their own influencers to onboard with more imaginative incentives: this is where the PR manager’s true skill comes in, with events planning and complex project management. A group of travel bloggers could be invited to try your guest’s travel experience offering luxury vacation packages, or you could arrange a very unusual tour, “forcing” lifestyle bloggers to run half a marathon with the support of the supplements sold from the e-commerce of sporting goods you are promoting, or organize an exclusive drive-test of the automotive brand’s new car that you care about promoting. All the activities that participants will be happy to write about, fueling buzz thanks to social sharing.