Digital PR is one of several strategies that can substantially impact a law firm’s online presence and client interactions in the long term. Digital PR encompasses a range of strategies that enhance a website’s authority, increase visibility, and build meaningful connections with potential clients and peers.

Whether you’re just starting to build your online presence or looking to enhance your existing digital strategy, this guide will walk you through the essentials of digital PR, tailored specifically for the legal industry.

Navigating Digital Marketing

For lawyers, SEO is a fundamental component of digital marketing. By appearing at the top of search results, attorneys can increase their visibility and credibility, making it easier for potential clients to find them.

Digital PR strategies are vital for boosting a lawyer’s SEO efforts. These strategies include creating and distributing high-quality content that attracts backlinks from reputable sites. High-quality backlinks drive traffic and signal to search engines the value and trustworthiness of the lawyer’s content.

Think of each backlink as a recommendation. When a website links to your site, it’s essentially saying, “This site has good content worth visiting.” Search engines use these links to determine how valuable and relevant your site is for specific topics. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more trustworthy and authoritative your site appears to search engines. 

Digital PR and SEO work together to drive results. Effective digital PR leads to improved SEO that strengthens online visibility and reputation. This enhanced reputation aids further PR efforts, creating a positive feedback loop. 

Tactical Approach to Digital PR For Law Firms

When evaluating the goals for each of your digital marketing initiatives, you should set unique key performance indicators for each strategy. For SEO tactics, that may mean higher keyword rankings or increased organic traffic. The primary KPI for digital PR may be the number of backlinks or quality of referring domains. 

Backlinks serve as a testament to the relevance and authority of a lawyer’s website. The quality and quantity of these backlinks can directly correlate to the success of digital PR campaigns. They indicate how well the content resonates with the audience and the wider community and how effectively it garners attention and engagement.

Tracking the number of backlinks and analyzing where they come from provides valuable insights into the impact of a law firm’s digital PR efforts. It helps in understanding which types of content are most effective in attracting high-quality backlinks and which platforms or collaborations are most beneficial. You may want to keep track of the following metrics: 

• Total number of backlinks 
• Number of unique referring domains 
• Domain authority of referring domains
• Percentage of backlinks that are follow

Assessing the increase in backlinks over time enables law firms to gauge growth in their online authority and reputation. This approach to ROI tracking ensures that the law firm’s efforts are visible and translate into tangible results.

Tools and Platforms for Digital PR For Lawyers

The foundation of effective digital PR lies in the creation of unique, creative content. This content should be developed with a wide audience in mind. The target audience of your digital PR campaign may not align with your company’s typical target audience. Since the goal of this strategy is to build backlinks, you should ideate content with broad appeal. 

The goal is to create content that is not only informative but also shareable and engaging, encouraging readers to spread the word. This can come in many different forms, including the following: 

• Data Analysis: This involves using existing datasets to tell a new story or provide additional insights. It might involve analyzing data from various sources to create compelling narratives or identify trends relevant to your audience. 
• Surveys: When no existing dataset matches your campaign idea, surveys are a powerful tool. Surveys offer the flexibility to explore almost any topic and draw responses from diverse populations.
• Interactive Content: This includes quizzes, calculators, tools, or contests that invite audience interaction. Interactive content is engaging because it allows the audience to relate directly to the material.

Regardless of the format you opt for, it’s essential to present the findings in an easily digestible format. Using imagery, color schemes, and clear labels helps make complex data accessible. Accompanying blog copy can provide additional context, fill gaps, and offer a narrative that complements the visual data.

After creating the content, the next step is to get it in front of the right audience. This point is where traditional PR strategies come into play, as you should identify who you’ll target and how you’ll reach them. Effective pitching involves personalizing communication, understanding the journalist’s area of interest, and presenting the content as a valuable resource for their readership.

There are various tools and platforms designed to assist in digital PR efforts. These include content management systems for organizing and publishing content, PR email platforms for distribution and engagement, and media databases that provide access to journalists and influencers.

Addressing Challenges in Digital PR for Lawyers

Digital PR offers countless opportunities for law firms, but it’s not without its challenges. Addressing these effectively is key to a successful digital PR strategy.

One common issue is the struggle to think of unique and engaging content ideas. To overcome this, law firms can look at current trending topics, client FAQs, or recent case studies for inspiration. Pulling in additional team members while brainstorming for fresh perspectives can help.

The brainstorming process sets the grounds for the rest of the digital PR strategy. If your concept is not feasible and unique, it will lead to issues later on. For instance, if you try to pitch a story that’s been covered in the media just a few weeks ago, you’ll quickly realize that journalists won’t be interested in reporting on the topic again. It’s better to get ahead of these potential challenges in the ideation phase to avoid wasted time and effort. 

Many law firms also face constraints with resources for producing and promoting campaigns. To mitigate this, prioritize quality over quantity — focus on creating fewer but more impactful pieces of content. You may also consider partnering with a digital PR agency with well-established processes and relationships. 

If the content isn’t meeting expectations, take a step back to analyze and understand why. This could involve A/B testing different types of content, revising SEO strategies, or actively engaging more with audiences on social media platforms. Using analytics tools to track user engagement and feedback can provide valuable insights into content performance. 

There are many different reasons why a campaign might not be building the links you hoped, so take a critical look at each piece of your content, from the data to the outreach. 

Shaping Trust and Credibility

Digital PR is not a one-off campaign; it’s a continuous effort that shapes the perception of law firms among their clients, peers, and the broader public. Regularly publishing insightful articles and contributing to relevant online discussions helps lawyers establish themselves as knowledgeable and reliable. This consistent messaging helps in building a reputation for expertise and trustworthiness.

The impact of digital PR is cumulative and long-lasting. As a law firm accumulates a robust portfolio of backlinks from diverse, authoritative sources, its website gains more authority. Heightened authority directly impacts the firm’s search engine rankings, leading to greater online visibility and a higher likelihood of being discovered by potential clients.

Each positive interaction, each well-received piece of content, and every successful campaign contributes to building a positive reputation. Over time, this can translate into a competitive advantage as the firm becomes a go-to source for legal expertise and advice. Building and maintaining relationships with media and influencers in the legal sector can lead to ongoing coverage, further amplifying the firm’s reach and solidifying its status in the industry.

Conclusion

Consistent, quality digital PR efforts build trust and credibility. Each positive interaction and well-crafted campaign can contribute to a law firm’s digital reputation, with the cumulative effect of these efforts leading to a substantial competitive advantage. The strategic focus on backlinks enhances immediate credibility and secures enduring SEO benefits that ensure long-term visibility and authority.

Adopting effective digital PR strategies is essential for law firms looking to thrive in an increasingly digital marketplace. Implementing these tactics can transform how firms are perceived online, attract more clients, and establish them as leaders in their field. 

At Go Fish Digital, we understand the intricacies of digital PR in the legal sector and can build quality campaigns that exceed expectations. If you’re looking for support building backlinks through digital PR, get in touch today.

Digital PR for Lawyers: A Comprehensive Guide is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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What Are Some Digital PR Examples?

Examples of digital PR include:

1. Consumer Surveys
2. Blog Posts
3. Third-Party Data Studies
4. City Ranking Studies
5. Google Trends Data
6. Interactive Tools
7. Newsjacking Content
8. Video Content

But coming up with that groundbreaking campaign concept is a tough challenge. One of the best ways to get the creative juices flowing is to look at successful campaigns in the past and identify what strategies you can replicate with your own content. Read on to learn more about 10 of our favorite digital PR examples and why they worked.

1. How Long Does It Take Tech CEOs to Earn Your Salary?

A great strategy for capturing the media’s attention is to provide deeper insight into something already in the news. If you align your content right and pitch the story when the topic is just beginning to surface, you can secure coverage from just about any publication. That’s what SimpleTexting did with the tech CEO calculator—unveiling exactly how much money various tech CEOs make, while these same moguls were making court appearances during antitrust hearings. This example of digital PR found its way into articles in The Guardian, Fast Company, Life Hacker, and many others. 

2. U.S. Cities With the Largest Affordable Housing Shortages

On the other hand, it sometimes works just as well to add to an evergreen conversation that seemingly always has and likely always will be in a part of the news cycle: affordable housing. In this digital PR example, United Way of the National Capital Area focuses on improving the lives of underserved individuals, which is why it made perfect sense for them to release a report on access to and cost of affordable housing around the U.S. The analysis was based on data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an authority in the space, and coupled with static and interactive graphics that bring the story to life. This example of digital PR resulted in coverage from publications like Business Insider, CNBC, NY Post, and the New York Times. 

3. The Most Expensive Airbnbs in Every U.S. State

Data sources are everywhere and often right in front of us. In this instance, Joybird turned to Airbnb to identify the most expensive listing in every U.S. state. Not only was this a fun piece to look at, but it was also highly personalized to readers across the U.S. by calling out specific listings in each state. Adding a local component to a digital PR campaign increases the outreach pool exponentially. As a result, you can pitch national and local reporters in all 50 states with data specific to their audience. This campaign earned the attention of House Beautiful, Apartment Therapy, Hunker, and many others.

4. The Best U.S. Cities to Be a Cat

Speaking of the power of local outreach, ranking cities against each other based on a variety of data points is another great example for building a local angle within your digital PR campaigns. For example, Veterinarians.org analyzed the best cities to be a cat based on cat adoptions, cat-friendly accommodations, access to veterinarians, and more. This led to local coverage from sites like The Salt Lake Tribune and national coverage from places like Matador Network. 

5. The Best U.S. Cities for Homebodies

The city ranking format works well when you have a creative list of ranking factors that bring it to life. For instance, consider the things that matter most to a homebody. You might think of things like the size of homes or number of remote jobs. Those are important to include, but it’s also critical to consider more niche factors, like internet speed, property crime rates, and number of grocery stores that offer delivery. Thinking of everything is what takes these campaigns to the next level and encourages a reporter to write a story about it. This digital PR example earned coverage from CBS, Travel + Leisure, WFLA, and others. 

6. The Most Popular Comfort Foods Sports by State

Google Trends is a powerful tool that digital PR experts can use to quickly add local insights without complicating data. You can determine how much each state is searching for pretty much any topic you’re interested in. When married with a relatable topic, such as comfort food, it makes for the perfect consumable piece of content. Pro tip: adding a map to this format is a great way to make the information easily digestible for reporters, no matter what state they’re in. This digital PR example attracted coverage from HuffPost, TimeOut, Boston Globe, and more. 

7. How Much Do Americans Work During a Workweek?

Surveys can be an effective digital PR campaign format, as they can create unique, proprietary insights. You’re limited by only your imagination when it comes to writing survey questions. In the height of work-from-home life during the pandemic, e-conolight asked people to anonymously admit what they actually spent their time doing while ‘on the clock.’ From taking a nap to online shopping to cracking a cold one, the results are pretty shocking; perhaps why it got the attention of sites like Fortune, ZDNet, and The Ladders. 

8. What Pleasures Would You Sacrifice to Keep Your Smartphone?

You’ll often find that no matter how many incredible insights you end up with, successful campaigns will have that one ‘golden nugget’ that causes them to go viral. It’s not always the highest value or obvious headline; it’s the stat that’s most controversial. In this case, SimpleTexting asked people to play a classic game of would you rather. Would you rather give up your smartphone or alcohol? What about coffee? Your pet? People were horrified to find that 40% would give up their dog over their smartphone, which made for a great conversation piece on many, including People, CNET, Daily Caller, and even Al Roker on the Today Show. 

9. House Hunting for Fun – Are Zillow Users Obsessed?

Coming up with a survey concept doesn’t have to be challenging, as there’s inspiration all around us. An SNL skit about Zillow inspired this Surety First survey, which aimed to see how realistic the skit really was. It turns out the skit wasn’t all that much of an exaggeration, as 49% of people say they would rather browse Zillow than have sex. This statistic alone resulted in coverage from The Guardian, Refinery29, and even the Drew Barrymore show. 

10. Get Paid to Binge-Watch Holiday Movies

Another popular digital PR campaign format is contests. You’ve probably seen a fair share of ‘job posting’ style contests asking users to complete certain tasks in exchange for prize money. A classic is the binge-watch contest, where a company asks users to apply for the chance to be paid for binge-watching movies in a given category. These work well for digital PR because they’re mutually beneficial to the company and the reporter—the company secures coverage while the reporter posts a story that drives strong engagement with their audience (who doesn’t want to win money for watching TV?). This contest was featured on Cosmopolitan, Woman’s Day, Country Living, and others. 

Putting Digital PR Examples into Action 

If all of this digital PR talk has you itching to build some coverage of your own, start by brainstorming a list of potential topics. Before launching any campaigns, there are three things you should keep in mind.

• Uniqueness: Has the content already been done? If so, are you adding a new perspective or a different angle to it? A journalist is not going to want to cover something they’ve already written about, so don’t skip this step. 
• Feasibility: How will you carry out the research? There’s nothing worse than coming up with the perfect campaign idea only to realize there’s no way to access the data. Be sure to lay out your research plan before committing to a concept. 
• Newsworthiness: Is the topic interesting enough to make the news? People often think of timely elements and current events, but you may also consider pieces that are tied to human interests, controversy, or oddity. 

Not sure where to start? Get in touch with our team at Go Fish Digital to learn more about our approach to digital PR.

The Best Examples of Digital PR Campaigns is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

But how do you secure these backlinks? The secret weapon to link building is tangential content, or in other words, an interesting article, report, or study designed to produce newsworthy insights. 

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In this guide, I’ll walk through the process we use to build high-quality backlinks and explain why it works. 

What Is Digital PR? 

Digital PR is a marketing technique that utilizes content, social media, SEO and influencer marketing to earn coverage from media outlets. The goal of digital PR is to help a brand earn more online exposure, impressions, and backlinks. 

Digital PR is similar to traditional PR in that it relies on relationship-building strategies in order to secure earned media. Both involve a form of outreach targeted at reporters, editors, publishers, or other media contacts. 

They also both revolve around mutually beneficial relationships, meaning that the media outlet benefits from the information received while the client benefits from the exposure.

While the two strategies share similar tactics, they differ in their goals and KPIs. A traditional PR campaign may aim to increase event attendance, drive product sales, or encourage participation.

A digital PR campaign on the other hand may focus on strengthening the health of a website, increasing search engine visibility, or driving new users to your site. Both traditional and digital PR share the goal of increasing brand awareness.

Because of these unique objectives, a digital PR campaign will look very different from a traditional one. Digital PR campaigns are often less related to the company’s brand, products, and service offerings by comparison, as they focus on overall digital presence rather than a specific marketing initiative.

The Ideation Phase 

Before you can consider reaching out to journalists, you have to come up with something to share with them. No matter how great you are at outreach, a pitch can only be as good as the content you’ve created—that’s what makes this first step of your digital PR strategy so critical. 

Everyone has their own way of getting their creative juices flowing. There’s truly no right or wrong way of brainstorming, but there are a few helpful things to keep in mind. 

First and foremost, keep the end goal top of mind. Ultimately, the purpose is to build backlinks, not to promote your brand or service. You can (and should) ideate around topics that relate to your industry but keep the content’s reach as broad as possible. 

For example, SimpleTexting, an SMS marketing company, could produce content around texting or advertising. But to expand the potential outreach pool, we did “An Analytical Deep Dive into The Office”, something a broad audience can relate to, but with a tie back to the office environment and drawing parallels among TV scripts and marketing. 

This campaign secured over 80 backlinks, including ones from Mental Floss and Cheat Sheet. 

Ultimately, the more creative freedom you give yourself during the brainstorm, the easier the next steps of the process will be.

Finding Inspiration 

When starting a brainstorm, you should be as open-minded as possible. At this stage in the process, there is no such thing as a bad idea. Avoid shooting down concepts because you don’t know how you’ll find the data or because you think it might not be interesting. You’ll iron out all those details later on in the process. 

If you have a team, it can be extremely helpful to involve others in ideation. Even if it’s just someone to bounce ideas off of, talking out a potential digital PR campaign concept can often surface other inspired ideas and things you wouldn’t have thought of on your own.

Buzzworthy and trending topics are also great places to start. If you can add to an already popular conversation with a new piece of research, you’ll have an easier time landing coverage than you would if you had to convince a journalist why your research is interesting. 

For example, if a particular TV series or movie was trending in the news, you could run an analysis of it to provide extra data to a journalist who may already be writing a piece about it. 

Social media platforms are a good source for insight into what is currently trending and upcoming. Simply scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok can often spark ideas. 

To go deeper, Reddit may also be used as inspiration through following subreddits related to your client’s industry and even larger communities like r/AskReddit or r/TodayILearned that engage thousands of users daily. 

Not only can posts inspire ideas, but comments can also lead to a potential campaign. If you’re interested in learning more about using Reddit for content ideation, my colleague Daniel Russell spoke at MozCon on this very topic. 

When you have a specific topic, AnswerThePublic.com can be a useful resource. It’s a search listening tool that shows the most popular Google searches around a specific keyword.

It can be used to broaden a particular topic from one keyword to dozens of related questions and concepts. You may find that a question people commonly ask about a given phrase could turn into a whole campaign in itself. 

One of the best sources of inspiration can also be your competitors. Keeping up with the campaigns that others are using in the digital PR world can be incredibly helpful to get ideas of your own rolling. 

You may be able to draw from not only a topic you see someone else doing, but you could also replicate formats or data sources where applicable, so long as your content is still unique and original.

Turning Ideas Into Campaign Concepts 

Once you have a solid list of ideas, you should go through and vet for the best. This is the time to be critical and separate the ideas that are truly unique and interesting from the ones that fall flat. 

Think about not only what you believe to be interesting, but also what appeals to the widest audience. It helps to have another set of eyes to offer a fresh perspective. At Go Fish, campaigns go through four people minimum before we pitch them to a client. 

If you’re having trouble deciding what’s interesting enough to make the cut, envision what the final campaign would look like and put yourself in a reporter’s shoes. Consider the following questions: 

• What headlines could result from this campaign? 
• If you got a pitch about it in your inbox, would you cover it? 
• Would the data make sense to the average person? 
• Is there any way you can tie the campaign back to something that’s going on in the news now? 

During this phase, we also run a few different content checks. Confirming feasibility is extremely important—there’s nothing worse than having an idea selected, only to find out that there’s no way to realistically gather the data weeks into the process. 

The more preparation you do in this stage, the easier it will be to actually produce the campaign. Nail down what sources you’ll be using, how you’ll collect the information, and if it’s a survey, maybe even draft a few sample questions. You should have a fairly clear vision for the direction of the campaign. 

Finally, hunt around to see what’s already out there on the topic. If an idea has already been done before, you’ll have a tougher time landing coverage. Odds are that an outlet won’t want to cover the same thing twice. 

As a rule of thumb, we usually avoid redoing a campaign if it’s been done within the past two years because the data would likely be substantially similar. It’s best to select ideas where the topic is relevant enough to spark interest but offers an additional insight or new angle to set it apart from the competition. 

If you run into issues with uniqueness, brainstorm ways you could differentiate the topic from what’s already out there or simply table the idea for the time being. 

A simple Google search suffices here, but be thorough with it. Think of all of the different angles and ways the story could be presented so that you’re aware of what potential competition exists. 

After you’ve thoroughly researched each idea, you may realize that your list of dozens of ideas has turned into only a handful of viable potential campaigns. That is completely normal and one of the reasons you should try to get as much out of the initial brainstorm as possible. 

Keep in mind that it’s better to select from a small batch of campaigns that you’re fully confident in than a large set that could be hit or miss.

The Production Phase 

Once you’ve nailed down a topic to run with, it’s time to bring your idea to life! This will be highly dependent on the idea selected, but at Go Fish Digital, we usually do some form of research, blog copy, and graphic development. 

Some of the most popular campaign formats include data analysis, surveys, and interactive pieces. 

Data Analysis 

Data analyses rely on existing datasets to tell a new story or provide additional insight. For example, we mapped out the best cities for cats based on the number of veterinarians from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of adoptions from Shelters Animals Count data, and more.

You can also use tools to pull or scrape a given data point. That includes things such as Google Trends for measuring search volume and popularity by location or Yelp for identifying frequency or ratings of a given category. Less common tools can be used for more niche methodologies, such as Hashtagify for scraping social media hashtags, for example. 

With data campaigns, there’s often the opportunity to analyze by a number of factors, including location as seen in the above example. Doing this not only allows you to crunch the numbers from a different angle, but it also substantially expands your outreach pool. It localizes the story so you could then pitch the findings to relevant reporters in each city or state, in addition to the national outlets. 

One key thing to keep in mind when it comes to data is that it’s important to provide an extra level of analysis. Be careful to avoid simply regurgitating the findings, as a media outlet could do that on its own. Whether it’s breaking down the data by various demographics or combining multiple sources to draw bigger conclusions, be sure that your campaign will be adding something to the conversation.

Surveys

In many cases, there may not be an existing dataset to match your idea, which is where surveys come into play. There are a variety of platforms (Pollfish, MTurk, and Prolific are a few we’ve used) that host surveys and collect responses. 

Once you have your data, you can analyze it by demographics such as gender, generation, and more to find the most interesting insights. 

Surveys have few limitations beyond your imagination. You can create a campaign around any topic and draw from nearly any pool of respondents. 

Depending on the survey platform you’re using and your desired sample size, you can screen for a certain subset of the population. You can survey a certain demographic (like people that make above a certain income), behavior (people that go to the gym regularly), interest (people that love a certain movie genre), or other factors. 

The questions you write will make or break your survey. When you’re drafting the questions, think about the potential insights each question will produce. Try to find the less obvious questions that will in turn help expand your topic’s reach. 

For example, if you were running a survey on work-life balance, you could add in a series of questions about how dating affects your career. That would allow you to pitch your insights to not only career and business reporters but also those that cover topics on dating and relationships. 

Multiple choice questions are great, but push yourself to incorporate creative question formats like would you rather, rankings, and open-ended questions. You can use media (like photos or videos) when necessary to add to your survey. 

In the above survey, we asked Americans what lengths they would go to keep their smartphones. We asked a series of would you rather questions pitting everyday luxuries against each other: would you rather give up your smartphone or your pet? Your significant other? Your morning coffee? 

It’s important to note that a survey’s authority lies heavily in the sample size. For U.S. national surveys, samples should be no smaller than 1,000 respondents, but the bigger the better. The cost and time it takes to gather responses are two of the biggest cons to this format. Account for these when you’re ideating campaigns initially to avoid any surprises. 

Interactive Content

A final campaign format we often use is interactive content. This could be in the form of a quiz, tool, or contest—anything that an audience can directly engage with. A great example is this calculator that reveals how quickly tech CEOs can make your salary.

Interactive content performs well because people love to read about things they can relate to and engage with. In addition, a journalist wants to write stories that will resonate with their audience, so the more engagement your content can generate, the more likely a reporter is to cover it. 

This type of campaign typically requires some development work, so be sure that both your team and your website is capable of supporting whatever concept you come up with. 

Creative Assets 

Once the research is compiled, put it together in a way that’s digestible and makes sense to the average person. Graphics are a great way to get a lot of information across in a way that’s easy to understand. 

Utilize creative data visualization techniques beyond traditional charts, such as relevant imagery and color schemes, to make your content pop. Pay careful attention to the labels and keys you include, as these are instrumental in conveying the meaning of the data. 

Copy can be used to bring everything together and fill in any missing gaps. When you’re writing the blog, put yourself in the reporter’s shoes—what would you want to know if you were trying to decide whether or not to cover it? Methodology details (What sources did you use and why? How did you conduct the research? When did you do the analysis?) are helpful to include along with a relatable hook in the introduction. 

The blog is also an opportunity to highlight any of the statistics that you felt were interesting but didn’t make the graphics. 

The Promotion Phase 

Once all of the assets of the campaign are ready to launch, you can begin promoting the content. Ideally, you’ll have the promotional materials ready to go when the campaign is live. The sooner you can start outreach for your digital PR campaign, the fresher and more enticing the content will be to your audience. 

Building a Media List 

Building a media list starts with identifying the target media outlets that are most likely to cover the campaign. From there, you can further narrow down the outreach pool by finding relevant contacts at those outlets. Reporters, editors, and producers within beats that match your campaign are great people to start with. 

Media databases like Cision and Pressrush are helpful for identifying and narrowing down a list of targets. There’s a fine line between quality and quantity. A larger volume of contacts gives you more people to pitch and thus more outreach potential. 

However, that only matters if the contacts are relevant to the subject you’re pitching. Someone that covers crime and politics will never pick up your story about dogs, no matter how solid your pitch is. Do your research on the types of content each reporter covers rather than blindly adding them to your list.

Keep your media list organized in a way that makes sense to you. Our team uses a spreadsheet that can easily be updated throughout the promotional period with any pertinent notes. This is also helpful to refer back to if you’re pitching multiple campaigns with similar topics—you can always pitch people again in the future. 

Unique Outreach Angles 

Think outside of the box when you’re building your media list. For example, a campaign about pet separation anxiety would obviously be a great fit for reporters that cover pet content. But by focusing on how pets are affecting their owner’s desire to work from home versus returning to the office, you could open up outreach to career and business reporters. 

That’s how we were able to secure backlinks from Forbes, People, and the Animal Rescue Site, all in one campaign. Coming up with unique outreach angles like this one will give you more people to pitch and more opportunities for backlinks. 

Don’t be afraid to include people you’ve never talked to on your media list. Though it certainly helps to have a pre-existing relationship with a journalist, it’s a major misconception that this is a requirement for outreach. Cold pitching can be successful when done correctly. 

Drafting a Pitch

Perfecting promotion strategies requires not only finding the right people but also pitching with the right message. Journalists’ inboxes are constantly flooded with story ideas so presenting your content in a way that stands out is critical. 

Grab journalists’ attention with a catchy, newsworthy subject line. Keep it light by getting to the point and quickly highlighting your most interesting findings. 

Since the subject line directly impacts a pitch’s opportunity for success, you should come up with a few different options. You might test out one that summarizes the campaign, one that highlights a key stat, and one that’s phrased in the form of a question. From there, you can A/B test each subject line with a small sample of contacts from your media list in order to gauge which has the most potential.

Here are some examples of what a subject line could look like: 

• Report investigates what lengths Americans would go to for their phone 
• 40% of Americans would give up their dog over their smartphone [survey data]
• What would you sacrifice to keep your smartphones? Survey finds out… 

There’s no magic formula for a pitch, do it however works best for you and your content. Many of our outreach messages are two to three sentences for an introduction and overview, three to five bullets of insights, and two to three closing sentences with any key methodology notes. 

Your outreach message is not just a presentation of your findings. Instead, think of it as a chance to convince the recipient that it’s something worth talking about. 

One way to do this is to tie the content back to something that’s already going on in the news. Nearly anything can be connected to a current event. 

For example, in the above “best cities to be a cat” campaign, though the content is evergreen and not related to any specific event, mentioning the fact that cat adoptions have surged amidst the COVID-19 pandemic adds a little more relevancy. 

Similarly, for the “tech CEOs calculator,” pitching around and referencing the antitrust investigation of 2020 where Zuckerburg, Bezos, and others testified, made a major difference in outreach. 

The more you can personalize your outreach, the better. If you can mention a reporter’s hometown or a recent story they’ve written, that increases your chances of resonating with them. Include statistics relevant to the person you’re pitching—so if you’re pitching someone in North Carolina, tell them what you found out about their state’s residents.

Following Up

You may also choose to include a follow-up approximately three to five days after your initial pitch. This gives the recipient a second chance to consider your content. It also provides you another opportunity to sell the campaign. Be careful not to pester with your follow-up—one additional email usually suffices. 

Remember that public relations is all about building mutually beneficial relationships, so make your case for how your content will help the person you’re pitching and their audience. 

Conducting Outreach

The pitching period will look different for each campaign that you run. Generally, we try to pitch our content for a minimum of six weeks. That allows for plenty of time to test out strategies, figure out what’s working, and hone in on your most successful angles. 

If you have the resources to invest in an email software like Buzzstream or Yesware, it will substantially help your outreach. Not only can it speed up the time you spend in your inbox, but it can also provide helpful insight into who’s opening and clicking your emails. These stats will help fine-tune your pitch to find the perfect message that resonates the most. 

For a benchmark, we typically consider an open rate above 35% and/or a click rate above 10% to be a solid pitch. These stats aren’t perfect as many email servers block tracking software. 

If your pitch is not getting any traction, you may have been flagged for spam. This happens if your email account gains a bad reputation or if your pitch triggers a spam filter. Avoid using phrases like “free info,” “risk-free,” or “guaranteed.” 

Don’t worry if you don’t receive much feedback right away. This doesn’t mean your link building campaign failed! Reporters will often cover a story without even responding to you—that means you’ve provided them with all the information they needed upfront.

Keep an eye out for unlinked mentions where a reporter covers your campaign but does not include a link back to your site. You can find these by setting up a Google news alert to keep track of times your topic or website is mentioned. In these cases, you should reach back out and request appropriate attribution. 

Around the three to four week mark, if you still haven’t received coverage, try to come up with ways you can revamp what you already have. Maybe that means looking for a new angle of people to pitch to, reworking your outreach message, or even going back to the production phases and adding additional data. 

It can also be helpful to have another set of eyes look through your campaign. By this point, you’ve spent a lot of time looking at the campaign. Bringing in a colleague to offer a new perspective and help you identify the most interesting pieces of your campaign can go a long way.

Measuring Success

Once you’ve kicked off outreach you can finally sit back and watch the links come in. Tools like Ahrefs and Buzzsumo are great for monitoring backlinks. It also helps to monitor content manually via social media and search engines.  

You may want to keep track of factors such as domain authority, anchor text, and whether a link is follow or nofollow and canonical or syndicated as these each impact a link’s value differently. 

Our team also analyzes link prominence (How much of the story is focused on the campaign—is it the focal point of the story or simply an added source?) and link relevance (How relevant is the media outlet to the client’s industry?). 

Other metrics that may be important are landing page sessions, social shares, and estimated coverage views. While backlinks are likely the primary goal of digital PR campaigns, there are many additional benefits worth reporting on that can help you further refine your digital PR strategy down the line.

Case Study

Like many SEO efforts, link building is a long-term strategy. You likely won’t see results overnight, but with persistence, it can make a big difference in your site’s visibility. 

SimpleTexting launched their first digital PR campaign in August of 2016. Since then, they’ve produced over 30 campaigns earning nearly 1,000 organic links in sum. 

Their campaigns have covered a wide range of topics over the years, some more closely related to the brand than others. Some have tapped into the marketing side of their business, such as a report on restaurant loyalty during the pandemic and a survey on how mobile shopping affects spending habits.  

Others have focused more on the consumer side with a tie-back to phones such as the dating app survey and the analysis of screen time usage by state.  

They’ve also utilized a variety of campaign formats, from the surveys and data analyses mentioned above to a contest where people were invited to apply to binge-watch movies for the chance to win $1,000. 

Wrapping Up 

One of the benefits of digital PR is that these campaigns easily build on themselves. With enough traction, they’ll continue to passively build links over time. That means that you may see coverage continue to roll in, years after you stop pitching it. 

Not every campaign will be a home run, so don’t give up if you don’t earn the traction you hoped for at first. Keep trying new campaign formats, topics, and outreach strategies until you find what works. 

Digital PR is also most impactful when supplemented with additional SEO strategies, so continue implementing optimizations and updates for best results.

The Ultimate Guide to Digital PR: From Brainstorming to Backlinks is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

If you’re in the digital PR industry, you’ve probably had a fair share of professors and field experts tell you the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to pitch a journalist. And while many of them likely have several good tips and tricks for how to pitch a story, you’ve also probably been fed a few unhelpful exaggerations. Below, I’ve outlined seven myths our digital PR agency has found about pitching journalists that should stop holding you back. 

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1. You have to have a pre-established relationship with a reporter to reach out. 

Relationships are important, and they can help a lot with securing coverage. But just because you don’t have a relationship with a journalist, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reach out. And on the flip side, just because you have a strong relationship with a journalist, doesn’t mean they’ll automatically cover anything you send them. 

If you’ve done your research and know that what you have to offer is a great fit for their coverage area, send them your pitch! Don’t feel weird about blindly reaching out to them – you’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last. After all, a cold pitch might just be the start of a long-lasting relationship. 

2. Every pitch should include a press release. 

Public relations and press releases go hand in hand. They can be a great solution for getting a lot of information across in a short document. But press releases are not, and should not be treated as, the only option when it comes to PR pitching. 

Press releases should be used sparingly when it makes sense. But for something like a data study that you can summarize in an email, they’re a waste of time to both you and the journalist. A good rule of thumb is that if you can distill your pitch into three or four bullet points, you don’t need a press release. An email alone is perfectly sufficient and gives journalists one less thing to open and read. 

3. Your pitch should include every single tiny detail. 

Speaking of all the details, you don’t need to cover them all in your first pitch. Of course, you should include all of the ‘must knows’ about whatever you’re sending. But don’t bore the journalist with the nitty-gritty. For example, a high-level of the methodology is important, but you don’t need to elaborate on how, when, and where the survey was conducted in the first pitch. 

Instead, keep it short and sweet. Think about highlighting the most newsworthy aspects of your topic. If you were a journalist, what would make you want to cover it? What are the eye-catching stats that would make the best headline? What are the details that a potential reader would be most interested to know? Include those insights and let the rest do the talking for itself. 

4. You must use a formal tone at all times. 

Proper grammar is undoubtedly a must. However, a formal tone as if you’re writing a college essay isn’t always the best approach. Remember, there’s a human behind that email inbox that you’re sending your pitch to. Communicate with them in an engaging manner that grabs their attention. 

Your tone should change based on what you’re pitching. For example, if you’re pitching a light-hearted piece such as ‘The Most Popular Ice Cream Flavor in Every State’, it might make sense to crack a joke or use more conversational language than you would for a more ‘hard-hitting’ news piece. Match the tone of your pitch with your content and keep in mind who you’ll be pitching when you write your outreach message. 

5. The more people you pitch, the more opportunity for success. 

It’s often believed that the more eyes you can get in front of your content, the better chance you have of securing coverage. The real secret is to get it in front of the right eyes. It doesn’t matter how many people you pitch – if you’re not hitting the right people, you’ll never get land coverage. 

When it comes to PR pitching, quality always trumps quantity. While building your outreach list, you should spend more time finding relevant contacts that are a great fit for your content rather than looking for a larger volume of contacts that likely won’t work out. At the end of the day, someone who exclusively covers new restaurants opening in their city will never cover content about the most popular interior design style in their state, so don’t add them to your media list just to take up space. 

6. Reporters will always respond if they’re planning to cover. 

Especially when it comes to digital PR, most reporters will cover campaigns without any response or indication of interest in the pitch. So if you’re not getting any feedback, don’t fret. This could just be a sign that your pitch is strong enough to stand alone without requiring any additional information. 

This is where email tracking software can be extremely useful. Technology like Yesware or Buzzstream can be used to keep track of who is opening emails, clicking links, viewing attachments, and more. A repeated number of email opens is a good sign of interest in the pitch. This not only allows you to identify who you should be monitoring, it also helps you gain insights on the health of the pitch – if you have low open or click rates overall, it may be time to change it up. 

7. You should never follow up. 

It’s no secret that reporters are very busy people. They are swamped with full inboxes and tight deadlines. That’s all the more reason why you should be following up on your pitches. 

A follow-up offers the journalist a gentle reminder while giving the PR pro a second chance to make an impression – take advantage of that opportunity! The best follow-ups will offer an additional piece of information or alternative angle to the first pitch. Maybe the journalist wasn’t interested in covering your general overview of hoarding statistics across the US, but when you present it as ‘the states with the most and least hoarders’, that’s an entirely new story idea for them, using the same dataset. Don’t be afraid to check back in on your initial outreach, just don’t overdo it or pester them with too many emails. 

Every PR professional has their own style of pitching. Don’t let myths about pitching or something you heard once scare you into sending your outreach a certain way. You should constantly experiment with your pitches and find what works best for you and your clients.

7 Myths About Pitching Journalists is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

If you really want to earn coverage, you’ve got to do just that – earn it. The more time you put into researching and creating your pitch materials, the more likely your recipients are to read the email in the first place and better yet, write about it. Read on for my tips on things you can do in the early stages of outreach to maximize your success. 

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Know What’s Already Been Covered

No matter how innovative and unique the content you’re pitching is, there’s probably something similar already on the internet. Do a little digging and get familiar with what’s out there. What’s been done, when was it done, and who covered it? 

Asking questions like this will help you figure out where your opportunities to earn coverage are. You’ll get a feeling of what journalists find newsworthy about your particular topic and what kinds of sites and reporters will be the most interested. 

You don’t have to find exact matches to the content you’ll be pitching. Instead, look for related topics that your content will supplement. For example: if you’re pitching ‘the most popular houseplant in each state’, look for articles on gardening and home decor trends. This will point you to a slew of authors who will care about your content and thus, be more likely to report on it. 

If you do find a lot of similar topics in the news, don’t fret. To provide value to journalists, you’ll need to pitch something they haven’t covered before, even if it’s another angle or update to their previous work. Ask yourself: what makes your content different? Is it recently updated data, or does it have some extra information the existing articles missed? Highlight these points to make your content stand out and your pitch will go a long way. 

Think Outside of the Box 

Many digital PR agencies use media databases to start their outreach lists, but it’s important to remember that these tools are not the end-all-be-all. They’re a great resource to get started, but there are endless outlets and reporters that are not a part of these databases. Writers can opt-out of these platforms to avoid getting spammed by mass pitches, but that doesn’t always mean they don’t want to hear from you. 

Get creative when finding journalists to pitch. Use tools like Google News to search for outlets that may not already be on your outreach list. You can also subscribe to source request platforms, such as HARO, to familiarize yourself with new outlets. It may take a little manual labor to find new sources, but it will be worth it when you earn coverage. 

You can also consider different types of outlets beyond the traditional online news publication sites. For example, your campaign might be a hit with bloggers, radio sites, or industry trade sites. Additionally, pitch beyond ‘writers’; you may find producers, assignment editors, or station managers that will cover your content. Each of these adds new opportunities for coverage and expands your possibilities for success. 

Have a Plan B on Hand… And a Plan C, D, and E. 

Just because you think a campaign is interesting doesn’t mean reporters will. It’s important to have a few backup plans in case things don’t go as expected. 

Start with perfecting your pitch. I always have at least three subject line options for every outreach message so I can easily swap them out if I’m not getting the responses I’d hoped for. On top of that, I like to write a few versions of the same pitch. They can be as simple as changing the data points highlighted or the structure of the pitch, but these small adjustments can go a long way in resonating with a reporter. 

Additionally, think about what other opportunities you have and look for ways you can reframe the campaign to appeal to multiple coverage areas. Is there a particular data point you can craft a new angle around? If you’re pitching a broad analysis campaign, you may be able to target the finance beat with specific cost-related data. If you’re pitching a pop-culture campaign, you may be able to narrow in on a specific celebrity and target entertainment columnists who keep up with that star. There are plenty of ways you can restructure a pitch – you just have to find them.

Finally, consider what options you have to pivot the campaign itself. Think about quick adjustments you could make to add a new angle and increase newsworthiness. Can you add in local data? Have you pulled the most recent stats?

Ask Yourself What You’re Missing 

Once you’ve prepared your materials and are ready to start pitching, take one more step back before you hit send. 

Go in with a fresh set of eyes and make sure all your bases are covered. Now is also a good time to think about what you’ve done for your outreach in the past. What worked then, and are you using those same strategies? What didn’t work, and have you made changes to avoid repeating problems? 

It can be helpful to put yourself in the shoes of a reporter and evaluate your materials from their perspective. Act as if you’re planning on writing a story on this campaign. What would you want to know? How would you want to be approached? This will give you a fresh look at your pitch and allow you to catch things you may have missed the first time around. Be extra critical – you may only get one shot with a reporter’s attention and you don’t want to mess it up with a minor blunder. 

A campaign is rarely perfect from the beginning. That’s why taking these steps to be extra-prepared before outreach begins can have a big impact on success. Being prepared is all about getting ahead of problems before they happen, and that goes double when it comes to pitching content. Open up as many opportunities as possible and you’ll be securing coverage before you know it. 

Before You Hit Send: How to Maximize Your Outreach Preparation is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

It helps to have background knowledge. 

Despite the experience I had before my content marketing role at Go Fish Digital, there were so many terms and tools I’d never heard of prior to this summer. I wasn’t familiar with the jargon. I also wasn’t familiar with the who, what, when, where, and why of the process. 

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 If you’re hoping to work in a digital marketing field or in the link building world, it’s best to familiarize yourself with these aspects of link building so you can sound like a professional link builder on day one. 

The What: Good Content 

Contrary to what tutorials and coursework might allude to, there’s much more to digital marketing than social media posts and email campaigns. Link building has been around since the 90s, but most people still don’t know much about it – I sure didn’t when I first started learning about marketing. 

The goal of link building, much like the goal of any form of marketing, is to raise awareness and engagement with a particular website. This is done by creating good, newsworthy content reporters will cover and credit back to your client.

Good content is often simple, straight-forward, and engaging. Audiences want something they can get information out of fast, rather than having to read a long article explaining a complicated story. The first campaign I pitched was “the most popular ice cream flavor in each state” using Google Trends search volume data. Despite how basic this concept is, the campaign got a lot of coverage on both the state and national levels. 

The Who: Relevant Reporters 

Reporters have one thing in common – they’re reporters. Outside of that, they’re just as unique as any other population subset. Reporters each have a beat or specific range of topics that they cover. Their beat could be anything from fashion and food to politics and local news. 

When you’re ready to pitch your content to journalists, you’ll have much more success if you find people and outlets that would be interested in your topic. Just like you wouldn’t care about the score of a football game if you weren’t a sports fan, a political journalist doesn’t care about your new findings of the most popular ice cream flavor in each state. So, conduct research to find the journalists that will be most interested in your topic and go from there.

The How and When: Pitching

Pitching is a lot easier said than done. 

During my time at Go Fish Digital, I’ve worked with multiple members of the promotion team who have each introduced me to their own personal styles of pitching. The beauty of pitching is that, while there are a few guidelines you should follow, it’s far from an exact science. There are best practices, like when you should be sending your pitches. 

Hint: the best time to pitch is on Tuesday.

Reporters get countless pitches each day. Give them the information they need, no more and no less. Think of people who have covered similar topics in the past. For example, if you’re pitching an ice cream campaign I mentioned above, try reaching out to those who have written about ‘National Ice Cream Day’. Writers will appreciate the extra time you put in to make sure your pitches are something they’d be interested in. 

Here’s a tip: always remember that reporters are humans too. Talk to them the way you would talk to anyone else. If you use formal language and overly fluffed copy, your email will likely end up getting ignored or deleted. It’s always best to write an email using your natural voice. 

The Where: Backlinks 

One of my favorite things about link building is the tangible results you get out of your hard work. There is nothing more satisfying than Googling a campaign you’ve worked on and finding coverage on popular websites. 

Link builders look at news differently than the average reader. Some important things to note are the domain authority, whether a link is followed or nofollow, and if the article is syndicated. To someone who had never looked at Cosmopolitan as more than a place for weekly horoscopes, these metrics sounded like a foreign language to me.

Truthfully, this language is way less intimidating than it sounds. Domain authority is really just a way to measure a website’s legitimacy and strength, specifically from the perspective of search engines like Google or Bing. Follow versus nofollow indicates whether one website’s credibility does or does not transfer to the website linked. Syndication is the process of a singular article showing up on multiple websites. Sites such as Yahoo and MSN, for example, often re-publish content from external sites. 

The Why: Drive Traffic 

The coverage you earn is far from the only deliverable in link building. At the end of the day, a really strong link is irrelevant if no one ends up coming to your website. Building links can help drive traffic and engagement to your site, which is what we all want. 

You’re probably very familiar with virality and might even keep up with all the latest trending topics.  However, measuring how ‘viral’ something went is more complex than looking at solely the number of retweets and likes one tweet got.

While these values have meaning, it’s also important to look at how many people a link reached across multiple platforms. We can also determine how many people view and click the links rather than simply relying on the like count. 

Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for tracking people’s digital behavior. If you haven’t used it before, it can look a little complex, but try not to get overwhelmed. Start with the basics, like how to navigate it and see how much traffic a site has. Try to explore one new feature of Analytics every time you use it and you’ll be a pro in no time. You can even get Google Analytics certified, which will make your resume look even better!

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, successful link building is much easier said than done. In order to get results, it requires extreme thoughtfulness and attention to detail. However, things are not always in your control. Sometimes a campaign isn’t as successful as you hoped it would be, that’s the nature of this type of work. 

The bottom line is that new positions and new skills are great learning experiences. You get something out of the workplace environment you can’t quite learn on your own. Have confidence in yourself and ask lots of questions for clarity. Your coworkers are beyond willing to help you every step of the way. Working as a new link builder is an exciting way to gain real world experience in the marketing industry – especially search marketing.

An Intro to Your First Digital PR Campaign is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.