The term Digital PR refers to a set of public relations and SEO strategies used to improve a client’s digital presence online. A robust strategy will increase the overall authority of your site and build brand visibility on the web. Read on to gain an understanding of what digital PR can do for your brand and how to implement it successfully.

Understanding Digital PR

The primary purpose of digital PR is to operate as a supplemental SEO strategy — to increase the authority of your site when crawled by search engines like Google. The way that Go Fish Digital accomplishes this ultimate goal is by building backlinks from media outlets. A backlink is a hyperlink from one website to another, such as your homepage, a blog, a landing page, or a product page, from another site. This builds link equity— a transference of authority and value to your site. Backlinks from authoritative sites are one metric that search engines use to tell how credible your own site is, sometimes called a vote of confidence. Think of it like a strong referral from your manager telling your company you’re fit for a promotion, or a high credit score telling your bank you’re worthy of a bigger loan.

Unlike a traditional PR strategy, which directly promotes the brand by emphasizing elements like expert industry knowledge, high-quality products, or a unique value proposition, digital PR uses tangential content pieces. These are interesting articles, data reports, or studies designed to produce newsworthy insights, that are then actively pitched to journalists and linked across high authority outlets to make your website more credible in the eyes of Google. The goal, again, is to ultimately aid overall SEO efforts by strengthening your backlink profile, not directly positioning your brand or product in the media, but rather, positioning your website on authoritative media websites.

Practical Digital PR Strategies and Solutions

Tangential content is an essential digital PR strategy. These creative campaigns, while tangential, are completely customized for the client throughout the process, who can opt to avoid certain topics (ex. religious or political content) and/or target certain topics (ex. insurance or dating). This must be balanced with the fact that the more newsworthy, relevant, and clickable the content, the more journalists will be interested in covering, and the more links will be secured. 

For example, while posting a controversial piece (ex. mask use during the pandemic) could conflict with your brand values, it would likely generate a lot of coverage. However, so would a lighthearted, yet polarizing piece on each state’s favorite Girl Scout cookies. Finding a middle ground that works for the client but is attractive to the media is key, and the options are infinite — from heavy data studies to illustrative AI campaigns. They can be posted on the client’s blog directly, or, on occasion, an orphaned page used for pitching wherein journalists are asked to link back to your homepage if the content doesn’t naturally fit an already designated spot on your site, such as a ‘news’ section or a ‘press room’.

Overall, at Go Fish Digital, our data across countless digital PR campaigns conclusively shows that the more tangential the content is — not about your brand but with a relatable tie-in to the brand — the more likely you are to secure a diverse (high-quantity and high quality, canonical and syndicated) backlink profile.

Journalists are completely accustomed to receiving tangential pitches. We’ve sourced feedback from reporters, who’ve confirmed they prioritize interesting and informational content that is relevant to their audience. A loose tie-in to the brand also means reporters can write up the content without worrying whether they are promoting a service, unlike traditional PR, where brands will pay top dollar for placements on media sites. These same sites understandably aren’t willing to highlight overtly branded content for free. Conversely, by creating content that naturally fits into the news cycle, and has a tie-in to your brand, yet doesn’t feel overly self-promotional, you can organically earn the interest of journalists writing for top news sites.

Other successful strategies include identifying competitors in your industry who are in the linkbuilding space by tracing the coverage that their campaigns secure in the media, and then pitching those journalists with your content. By securing a link on the same domain as your competitor, you not only have brand visibility where they do, but you are now in effect negating the power their link has over your own backlink profile. Imagine it as a game of darts, where earned points cancel out points earned by the opposing team.

Networking with journalists is equally important in digital PR as it is in traditional PR. At Go Fish Digital, we primarily communicate with journalists via email pitches, press releases, and interviews on behalf of our clients to answer campaign data requests or give a quote. Having your brand name become synonymous in a journalist’s inbox as a true resource, not an ad or guest post request, is priceless. If you treat gaining coverage as a result of establishing these relationships, you’ll find instead of one backlink to your site, you’ll build a relationship with no ceiling on the number of backlinks. Keep networking and soon they’ll recognize your name as a credible source.

Tackling Common Digital PR Problems and Implementing Solutions

As the news cycle is running in a realtime, and linkbuilding is all about attracting journalists, a common problem we see in digital PR is competition with other content campaigns, who are often trying to capitalize on the same topic and frequently pitching the same outlets.

We combat this at several stages during our creative process. We meticulously vet our brainstormed ideas for newsworthiness, relatability, uniqueness, size of the pitching pool, and more before presenting a pitch deck to a client. We remain nimble and reactive during production so we can implement creative pivots should a competitor drop a related campaign.

Next, clients with a large scope need to avoid cannibalizing their own campaigns, which means launching similar campaigns with the same pitching period that target the same beat and then have to compete against each other. Client communication (if you work in an agency) or communication with management (if you work in-house) is an easy fix here. Organize your timelines with journalists’ content calendars and keep the newscycle top of mind to create proper spacing. You can then walk the client through your strategy during the process.

One other common problem in digital PR is when a client wants to stick very closely to the brand rather than opting for a tangential campaign. Branded campaigns can be successful, but it’s far more likely with clients whose websites are highly authoritative or whose brand name is recognizable. Also, certain industries see more success with branded campaigns because of the amount of journalists and types of outlets — for example, real estate, travel, and finance — while others have proven particularly difficult — for example, relationship and dating, where journalists are more likely to write opinion pieces. That’s not to say it’s impossible in these spaces, it simply requires extra creativity! Our data recommends tangential campaigns for such brands, while an authoritative travel brand, for example, would likely still see success with a branded campaign.

Tools and Metrics in Digital PR

Digital PR and traditional PR share some similar tactics — building mutually beneficial relationships where media outlets can benefit from (sometimes exclusive) information while the brand benefits from exposure — but they differ in key performance indicators (KPIs).

Instead of goals like high event attendance and product sales, digital PR aims to improve the health of your website in order to improve your online presence and increase search engine visibility. An added benefit is driving new users to your site, which both increases brand visibility and can lead to conversions depending on your industry. From a sales perspective, digital PR is a top-of-the-funnel initiative: It can gain the attention of potential customers (who see the content campaign in the media and follow the link) and bring them into the company’s sales funnel.

It may be a long-term SEO strategy but there are certainly metrics that are used to measure the impact of digital PR in the short term. The most relevant when securing links is domain authority (developed by Moz) or domain ranking (developed by Ahrefs). Both measure the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a scale of 1 to 100. Theoretically, the higher the number the better the website will rank on search engines. When pitching, we target high DA/DR outlets, which will pass on more link equity to your site than low DA/DR outlets. Generally, a DA over 70 is considered an excellent link for your backlink profile, but a range of links of different DAs and from different industries also comes across as a natural pattern to search engines, potentially boosting your online presence as well.

Link quantity refers to the number of links earned: We call 8-10 links per campaign a standard performance.

Link relevance and link prominence are also important metrics alongside with link quality (measured by DA). Link relevance is how relevant the media outlet is to the client’s industry while link prominence is how significant the campaign is in the story (for example, the article revolving around the campaign vs being an additional source).

Anchor text is the text that is hyperlinked and it can help indicate if the link is canonical (the original media piece) or syndicated (iterations of the original piece on other news sites that often use the same images and text) and if the latter, where from. Some experts say that a varied anchor text in a link profile is preferred by search engines. The META SEO inspector is one extension that can identify the canonical tag of the article, which indicates whether the piece is syndicated or not. 

Links can also be categorized as a follow or nofollow link, which can each affect the value of the link differently. A follow link transfers that vote of confidence to your site, strengthening the health of the overall website. A nofollow link refers to a tag within the hyperlink that media outlets add to their so as not to transfer link equity. This practice was established to prevent link manipulation during the early days of digital PR. When a search engine reads the nofollow tag, it turns a blind eye to the link for search ranking purposes. While the primary goal of digital PR is achieved by securing follow links, nofollow links are still beneficial:

Google Analytics can be used to track impressions in the form of sessions, page views, page views per session, and much more. The tool can also be used to see where exactly the traffic to the campaign landing page is coming from. For example, if you secure a Forbes link, which is always nofollow, the benefit is made obvious by tracing the origin of the sessions. If a high number of sessions is coming directly from the Forbes piece, your site is not receiving link equity, but the piece is driving landing page sessions which can increase brand awareness, drive conversions, and increase sales.

To name just a few of our other favorite tools: Cision for building outreach lists, Buzzstream for pitching and email tracking, and Coverage Book for assembling performance reports. Tools like Ahrefs and Buzzsumo can be used to monitor backlinks, along with manually monitoring coverage via social media and search engines.

Additional Benefits of Digital PR

By incorporating digital PR into your SEO strategy, you’re not only taking the proper steps to increase your visibility online. The earned backlinks will increase your authority in the eyes of search engines, and the content that lives on your site can also rank for keywords and become a valuable resource to journalists and your audience.

If you’re looking to convince your client or boss of the ROI of digital PR, try starting with these two measurable outcomes: brand visibility and top-of-the-funnel sales strategy. Next, emphasize the difference between traditional PR and digital PR: A digital PR strategy will work hand in hand with your SEO goals to increase the authority of your site and rank for keywords. Content campaigns can also generate passive coverage over time when journalists cite the piece as a source down the road (we see this often with career and business campaigns). 

With no effort on your end, aside from maybe an updated publish date, the content lives on, securing links and driving traffic to your site far outside the pitching period.

Conclusion

If your company is genuinely committed to building backlinks, a tangential digital PR strategy needs to be your bread and butter. We’ve done the tests for you.

If your team can understand the significance of digital PR strategies for your business, you’re one step closer to bridging the gap between your competitors and strengthening your online presence, among other benefits.

We’re constantly evaluating what’s working at the moment, and how to best learn from and measure both our setbacks and successes, so stay tuned. We look forward to sharing new insights with you in the near future.

The Power of Digital PR Strategy to Improve Online Presence is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

There’s nothing worse than writing a killer pitch with an open rate in the single digits.

In a 2019 interview with MuckRack, BuzzFeed News reporter David Mack put it plainly:

“I get roughly 300 emails a day…Most of the time, I read a subject line and that’s it.”

And if your subject line ain’t solid, a perfect pitch doesn’t matter — it never sees the light of day.

The good news? Writing strong subject lines is a skill you can build with practice, and there are a few solid strategies that have helped me grow in my two years as a digital PR strategist. Call it at least 800 subject lines of trial and error.

As a baseline for success, as you move through these different methods, test multiple subject lines on small groups of contacts as you go. While open rates can vary based on pitching software, spam filters, the beat, national or local angles, and more, a relative rule of thumb is a strong open rate will be above 30%.

Here are some of my favorite strategies for writing effective subject lines that will get your pitch opened and story covered:

Going Through the Motions

Let’s look at this data campaign: The Best Cities for Hybrid Work. Our team scraped LinkedIn’s job database for hybrid job openings in 100 of America’s largest cities and pulled salary data across cities and industries. My basic outreach strategy was to target career, finance, and local journalists.

Working on autopilot, pitching all day, your first instinct for a national subject line might be to CMD-V the campaign title into your subject line and fire away those mass emails: 

The Best U.S. Cities for Hybrid Work Opportunities

Let’s say, locally, you do the same, and grab that first insight as written in the study:​

Atlanta Ranks #1 as the Best City for Hybrid Work

In the next seven steps, we’ll workshop these subject lines together and transform them into ‘opens’ in the inboxes of journalists at top-tier outlets.

Strategy 1: Get Personal

Strategy 1 is the most time-consuming and most effective technique for writing a subject line, which is why we’ll cover this first. This involves reaching out to journalists such as:

• Those you already have a professional relationship with
• Those whom you’ve thoroughly researched and your campaign is a great fit for their very specific role (e.g., An Atlanta career reporter whose last three articles have been on hybrid work practices)
• Those who have previously covered your client’s content
• Those who have previously covered your agency’s campaigns
• Those who cover this particular type of content (city-rankings, Google Trends campaigns, etc)

A BuzzSumo analysis of their 600K journalists database found, “48% of journalists said that the number one thing a PR can do to get in their good books is to ‘Understand my current beat and position, and make their pitch relevant to this.’”

A common practice to begin addressing this is to localize your pitch using merge fields, adding phrases, city names, and other city-specific statistics that match with contacts from that area.

There’s no reason this can’t start in the subject line! Whether you employ merge fields for groups of journalists at a time, or do this manually, it should be as tailored as possible and jump out of their inbox as coming from someone who has done their research:

Hi [Name] – another 2022 hybrid work study for you!

We’re calling her by name, we’re bringing up a previous relationship, we’re calling out her beat.

Simple Texting releases new employee data, updated with LinkedIn data

We’re bringing up a client they trust and mentioning a previous campaign.

[City] ranks high once again in nation rankings for high wages

We’re naming his location and beat while referencing a previous campaign.

And so on. Later we’ll go in-depth on how to use past coverage to your advantage. The main takeaway is this: nothing beats human connection and good research. Even in a subject line. Your ultimate goal is to be a resource for journalists. If you treat gaining coverage as a result of this, you’ll find instead of a single payoff, a single backlink for your client, you’ll build more backlinks for all of your campaigns to follow.

Strategy 1 will not only lead to journalists opening your pitches, but they will recognize your email in their inbox and your name as a credible source.

Strategy 2: Front-Load Your Subject Line

Now, let’s focus on journalists we don’t know personally. Realistically, imagine we know their outlet and beat.

Let’s front-load our first two subject lines with keywords. Most email platforms will cut off around 60 characters, while journalists checking pitches on their phones might see around 30. I want the first few words to be punchy, and The Best Cities for… is a subject line I’ve used many, many times, which means my contacts have seen it, many, many times. Sometimes it works, but this is a national pitch that needs to stand out in massive newsroom emails.

I went with this: 

Making six figures while working hybrid is easier in these cities

I know these reporters want finance and career pitches, and I, for one, would open an email that starts with the idea of making six figures. I’ve provided a specific angle: Think less of sending the title of a paper and more of a news headline. There’s no value in being vague.

Similarly, a local subject line should have the city or state in the first couple of words:

Chicago breaks the top-10 in national ranking of best cities for hybrid work

The first two words here, “Chicago breaks…” include a strong verb and the city name right off the bat.

Strategy 3: Flex Your Authority

Flex your authority. 

Is my marketing software client a direct authority when it comes to hybrid work?

Not so much. I won’t include their name in the subject line here.

An example of a case where you should? A furniture retailer on interior design:

Campaign: The Most Popular Interior Design Styles

Joybird analyzed over 130 design trends & decor items

Joybird study reveals the most popular design styles

When you can’t flex the authority of the client, you can flex a thorough methodology. I’ll ask myself, is the data collection one of the most interesting, compelling pieces of the campaign? If it is, try adding it in as a component:

The top interior design styles, according to Pinterest data

And there’s the money subject line! Apartment Therapy covered the campaign with the headline:

“These are The Most Popular 2023 Interior Design Styles, According to Pinterest”

Adding the general campaign type and the name of the city (at the front-end, Strategy 2!) accomplished the same technique, seen here for Joybird’s Best City for Homebodies:

[Study] Pittsburgh Among The Best Cities For Homebodies

… covered with practically the same headline by CBS News. Success! Flex your client or your method!

In the case of Hybrid Work, we have a data study, specifically a LinkedIn scrape, and the method was really interesting to me. It was as easy as adding:

Making six figures while working hybrid is easier in these cities, study suggests

[DATA] Making six figures while working hybrid is easier in these cities

Make six figures while working hybrid in these cities, according to LinkedIn

Now you’re primed to shoot off some emails. A journalist at The Street plunked it from their inbox, covering it with the headline:

“Want to Make Six Figures Without Going to an Office? Move to These Cities”.

Strategy 4: Steal The Headlines

Okay, so you’ve secured some coverage. It’s time for one of my favorite, and quite effective (and easier!) strategies: Steal! That! Headline! Capitalize on that successful angle, respect what the journalists found most newsworthy, and trust they know how to write headlines in a tone their beat is going to respond to.

And make sure to pocket these headlines — specifically the types of verbs, the abbreviations, and any patterns, not just for your next round of subject lines, but for your next campaign! The more you pitch certain beats, and within that, the same outlets, you’ll have a better knack for their headline style and can work to echo it in your subject lines as you see fit.

A journalist at CNBC covered Hybrid Work with the headline:

“The 10 best cities for finding a hybrid job that pays $100,000 or more”

Coverage of another career campaign for the same client, The Most Common Corporate Lingo was covered again by CNBC with the headline:

“10 corporate buzzwords that show up in job listings the most.”

I’ve got a takeaway: My next finance campaign? My subject line will be structured as a list of 10! Paying attention to an outlet or journalist’s headline is also an indicator of what style/angle an editor is going to approve. Journalists appreciate the extra legwork.

Strategy 5: Don’t Waste Anyone’s Time

There are going to be times when you don’t find a campaign absolutely riveting. Maybe it’s a survey, and you just couldn’t predict that the insights would be a tad snooze-worthy. Maybe it’s an AI campaign that made you swear never to work with robots again. Maybe it’s a campaign so close to the client’s brand that you fear pitching it to journalists will have you labeled ‘AD’ or so far from the brand you’re now inbox clickbait.

Roll up your sleeves. This is your opportunity. You’re going to find an interesting statistic in this campaign if it’s the last subject line you write.

Because Strategy 5? Don’t be boring!

Ask a friend, a family member, or a man on the street if the insight you’ve deemed important is actually interesting. Hop over to Google News and see how others are covering the topic. Do your due diligence.

And when all else fails, don’t overextend your pitching strategy. Acknowledge the campaign’s limitations and work to find the journalists that truly would care about XYZ (Maybe it’s not you, or most of the rest of the world, but there’s seriously a beat for everything these days). Protect your relationships with journalists who wouldn’t be interested, and challenge yourself to pitch to more niche publications.

If you can’t glean an interesting subject line when all is said and done, relook at the campaign as a whole. Don’t blast just anyone’s inbox as a last resort.

Strategy 6: Commit to a Tone

Throughout this guide, we’ve walked through the Hybrid Work campaign. Our subject lines became sharper, but one could say our tone remained consistent. 

From

The Best U.S. Cities for Hybrid Work Opportunities

to our more interesting iterations like

Want to Make Six Figures Without Going to an Office? Move to These Cities

both are matter-of-fact and informative. While the latter is more likely to be opened, I wouldn’t say the former would automatically be off-putting to a journalist. Similarly, in their Employee Burnout campaign, I first opted to use a broad subject line:

A Snapshot of Employee Burnout & Quit Rates in the U.S. 

which received no coverage, and when I switched to a more data-driven insight

1 in 3 think about quitting their current job at least once a week

which was picked up by Forbes. While the latter was opened more and secured coverage, both subject lines are appropriate tones for the client and the campaign.

Conversely, there are many incidents where ‘spicing up your subject line’ can alter the tone in a way that will land you right in a spam folder. One of the best parts of agency life is the diverse group of clients I get to work with each day. There are many wonderful opportunities for your subject line to be silly, punny, or tongue-in-cheek. I secured a TODAY Show segment with a food pun! However:

• Check your campaign, client, context, and climate
• Practice your subject line humor first on radio stations and local TV news before you send a national pitch
• If you ever fear you’re toeing the line, get some pulse checks from your team

Remember that your subject line will be out of context from the rest of your pitch. My own rule of thumb, if I’m not completely confident, is to put my humor in the hook of the pitch and try a different strategy in the subject line.

Another indicator of tone is the use of capitalization. Journalists don’t want to be shouted at in their inbox with an ALL CAPS but don’t be afraid to experiment with them for emphasis. All of these iterations are acceptable:

• Pittsburgh is The Best City For Homebodies
• Pittsburgh is the best city for homebodies
• Pittsburgh is the BEST city for homebodies

For more direction, look at the coverage in that beat and see how they use capitalization or judge grammatically whether it’s more of a sentence or a headline.

Strategy 7: Establish Urgency

If you can, create a sense of urgency if appropriate. This can mean mentioning a timely event, from Christmas to National Cake Day to hurricane season. Most frequently in my day-to-day, I’ll apply this to entertainment beat pitches. Some general examples include:

• Today is [Event] – Everything you need to know on [Campaign Topic]
• [Date] is [National Holiday] – This is [State]’s favorite [Campaign Topic]
• Prepare for tonight’s premiere by catching up on [Campaign Topic]

More specifically, on a campaign on Every State’s Favorite Robot, I swapped my headline multiple times during the promotion period to establish a sense of urgency.

1st Evergreen:

The Most Popular Movie Robot in Every U.S. State

2nd RoboWeek:

Celebrate RoboWeek: [Robot] is [State]’s favorite movie robot

3rd National Star Wars Day: 

May the 4th be With You: [Robot] is [State]’s Favorite Movie Robot

Another way I’ll establish a sense of urgency or timeliness in the subject line is to find journalists who are actively reporting on a story that my campaign might help inform. I’ll then make the subject line that one statistic that might relate most.

Finally, if a campaign is hot out of the oven, I’ll date it with the subject line:

August 2023 study reveals…

Conclusion

An open rate in the single digits? We’ve all been there. Give some of these strategies a go!

Strategy 1: Get Personal

Strategy 2: Front-Load Your Subject Line

Strategy 3: Flex Your Authority

Strategy 4: Steal The Headlines

Strategy 5: Don’t Waste Anyone’s Time

Strategy 6: Commit to a Tone

Strategy 7: Establish Urgency

Stuck Writing Subject Lines? 7 Strategies to Get Your Pitch Opened & Story Covered is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.