SEO Insights > Key takeaways from BrightonSEO’s Digital PR Show

Key takeaways from BrightonSEO’s Digital PR Show

Posted by Leszek Rzesniowiecki on November 1, 2022

The Online Digital PR Show last week showed how quickly the digital PR sector is evolving. All speakers agreed that digital PR is more important than ever given the current geopolitical and economic unpredictability.

The event was held from 5 October to 7 October, with the main event occurring on Thursday the 6th and Friday the 7th, while the Online PR Show took place on the 5th. The Blue Array Digital PR team travelled to Brighton to expand our knowledge of digital PR and share the most important findings below.

Launching your own media hub – Raluca Zdru

During the first session of the day, Raluca Zdru discussed how having your own media may assist in marketing your digital PR strategy. The concept is straightforward: by building a location where all of your data resides—the media hub—you can garner coverage and an expert voice for your brand/client in addition to outreaching your efforts. The benefit? It enables you to optimise for the keywords that journalists actually use while adding some SEO spice to your PR efforts.

Why is launching data hubs important?

PR’s biggest challenge is to get a response from a journalist. Journalists will receive 1 to 5 pitches per day which equals 5-25 pitches a week. Almost 1 in 4 journalists will reject pitches based on bad timing. Having a media hub with data that can support your story can be crucial to securing that desired coverage.

A media hub with comprehensive data helps your outreach become more reputable and easier to access for journalists who are familiar with your brand.

What’s the process of launching a data hub?

• Expertise and data
• Format
• Design
• Coding time
• Add old content
• Promote and get results

How to manage productivity dysmorphia in the digital space – Megan Packer

This session discussed speakers’ experiences with productivity dysmorphia in the context of digital PR and creative work, defining it and offering helpful advice on how to deal with it in the workplace.

What’s productivity dysmorphia? It’s an inability to see your own success. It’s in the interception of burnout, imposter syndrome and anxiety.

What’s causing productivity dysmorphia? Living and working in a fast-paced environment.

What’s the overarching feeling you get when you achieve something at work?

• 50% of people were proud of themselves
• 36% already think about the next task
• 6% detach themselves from it
• 8% think it’s not good enough

Where does productivity dysmorphia come from?

It’s different for all of us. It’s important to recognise it.

How do you manage it?

• Your version of success will be different to that of your colleague
• Celebrate your wins, recognise them and don’t dismiss them
• Make your to-do list manageable, and allocate the time
• When you feel disconnected, remind yourself who you are and what are your abilities

Key learnings:

• Success doesn’t equal productivity
• Practice being more present
• Determine what productivity means and set your goals according to this

Driving behaviour change with emotive video – Jon Mowat

Making an emotional connection with your target audience is essential, but how can emotional videos alter viewer behaviour and how can businesses make better use of it?

• Emotional campaigns produce better effects
• No one cares about your facts
• Less is more
• It makes people feel things by using emotional drivers

Time to give a sheet about data and excel in digital PR – Gemma Flinders

Not many digital PR teams are lucky enough to have a data team on hand to assist with data collecting and analysis. Data-driven campaigns are the backbone of PR, so it’s critical that, should a PR shift to an agency without a data team, they feel comfortable analysing their own campaign data. This session focused on the essential formulas for PR data campaigns along with examples of the campaigns they may be applied to. Starting with the fundamentals and going over some of the trickier formulas that PRs can try out in their upcoming campaign.

Key learnings:

• No matter how much time we think we spend working on spreadsheets, there are numerous aspects of our jobs that expose us to data on a daily basis. From reporting on traffic growth, average DA or DR of websites, and percentage changes in visibility in reports to the gathering and analysis of data for data-driven initiatives.
• Benefits of data campaigns: multiple angles, make us credible and help us achieve a linkable asset
• How to make your data clear: Remove duplicates, trim white spaces, remove irrelevant data points and remove blank rows

Impression has created a quite comprehensive worksheet which can be extremely useful for any PR professional.

Making measurement meaningful in digital PR – Jen Grey

Do clients understand the importance of links?

Backlinks are the third pillar of SEO and are becoming more important for competitive industries.

• The goal is to work towards links and visibility.
• Forecast the uplift your activity brings, focus on keywords sat on page 2
• Be realistic
• Define your opportunity size

Focus on performance increase and resulting revenue.

How to please Gen Z with PR – Kamila Hanson

• 40% of consumers will be Gen Z in the next year
• 75% use phones over computers
• 97% learn about new things from social media
• Searching for things on TikTok

What convinces Gen Z?

Authenticity

• Smaller influencers’ audiences are more engaged

Transparency

• Gen Z want to be well-informed about the brand and what’s happening behind the scenes
• 37% abandon a purchase or leave a negative review if they have a poor digital shopping experience

Admit to mistakes

Know how to apologise. According to a survey conducted by DeVries Global during the fourth quarter of 2021, 84% of the respondents are willing to forgive and support a brand again after a mistake if the brand takes action and accountability.

Highlight your positives and social and environmental responsibility

45% of Gen Z boycotted a business due to its stance on a particular issue

76% of Gen Z expect their favourite brands to reward loyalty

Communicate their way

51% of Gen Z get their daily news from social media, compared just to 30% from news websites

Evolving and maturing your reactive PR strategy – Sophie Rhone

During lockdown journalists wanted:

• 30% Guides
• 29% Expert Opinion
• 26% Data
• 15% Fun and Quirky content

How to build trust with clients?

1. Initial – Pique and manage interest, stress test the client’s processes, and generate results. Provide highly relevant and topical ideas, free insights to rack opportunities, simple quotes and commentary. See if clients have data and spokespeople available for comments.
2. Defined – Build a process with the client so it’s repeatable, be consistent with insights and ideas, Report on results, and track keywords
3. Integrated – Show your client that an integrated approach with both parties is valuable, and bring in social and paid thinking
4. Progressive – Empower the client to be the best, and lead the industry by innovating and testing creative execution

Key takeaways:

• Our job is to help clients evolve
• All clients have their own pace and challenges
• Build capacity with clients instead of just ideas

Top tier media relations – what national journalists do, and do not, want – Luke Budka

Journalists expect timely contributions, ideally as soon as possible or within an hour of the story breaking.

Inboxes act as “little black books”

• Some journalists archive comments in case they need to access them later
• Clients meeting with a journalist means building relationships, not securing coverage
• Journalists care about qualified spokespeople
• Journalists want a different view on the story – have an interesting angle to share

See you next year!

For anyone active in digital PR, sharing experiences, lessons learned, and important ideas can be very beneficial. A strong strategic digital PR campaign enables the authoritative voice of industry leaders to be heard by the appropriate audiences and have an impact.

See you at the Online PR Show next year!