What is digital pr and why do you need it?

Last updated on May 6th, 2025 at 01:50 pm

What is digital pr?

Digital PR is all about building a brand’s online presence.

Once upon a time, this would have been achieved through gaining backlinks from reputable third-party sites. This translates as gaining online media coverage which features positive sentiment.

Google no longer holds the keys to the search castle and the world of digital PR is changing. As digital PR specialists, so too must we!

Digital PR 101

Typically speaking, digital PR, as a discipline, involves many complementary strategies and tactics. All of which serve to enhance your online presence

It combines elements of content marketing, social media management, media relations and online reputation management. Making it a true powerhouse strategy when it comes to increasing brand awareness and building a platform for growth.

Typically, digital PR will contain these key things:

Media strategy: connecting with journalists and online publishers who write about your industry. Pitching relevant content, stories and features to key bodies to secure valuable online coverage

Content creation and content marketing: this content can be activated within the media landscape or kept to your own channels. A healthy mix of both is the most promising to ensure you’re reaching your audiences.

Community management: an offshoot of your content and social strategies, community management is primarily an engagement strategy. It’s the time you spend within your owned channels engaging with your audiences, commenting, responding and generally engaging with those who engage with you. Think of it as a blurred line between marketing and customer service.

Online reputation management: involves the active monitoring of all of your brand mentions. The good, the bad, the indifferent. This partly feeds into your community management outreach, but it should also fuel your ongoing business strategies. If your audiences are telling you something needs to change, you need to listen

The ‘evolution’ of digital PR

A digital PR campaign would once have been centred around link building, a practice that combines aspects of traditional pr and SEO tactics to gain positive coverage in online channels and media outlets.

This coverage may or may not come with backlinks. These backlinks would be a vital component in the health and prosperity of your site.

For the purposes of this blog, we won’t get drawn into dofollow/nofollow link debate. That’s for another time. It’s suffice to say that nofollow links from a high-quality, high-traffic news site can be hugely valuable.

It’s no longer just about getting your brand message and a potential link through some online media, though that’s still a part of what we do in a digital PR campaign.

Digital PR has come a long way since then.

What’s new in the world of digital PR?

A strong digital PR strategy should go beyond ‘traditional public relations’ because your brand’s visibility doesn’t solely live on Google and third-party media sites.

From the content you upload to your website, owned social media campaigns, influencer marketing and more. There’s a whole world of potential audience engagement out there.

TikTok and YouTube are the ‘big two’ because they’re both search engines in their own right. There’s a huge amount of data out there supporting the fact that younger generations now use TikTok more than they use Google. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world.

Just let that sink in.

The site that you thought was just a video-sharing platform is, in fact, the second-largest search engine in the world.

Google’s now pulling through all kinds of weird and wonderful content into its SERP. It’s not just straight web links anymore.

New additions to the SERP

You’ve likely noticed that your Google search results are a little different lately. Google has started promoting a lot of different content within the SERP itself.

Let’s say you run a search for ‘how to fill in a tax return online’.

Not too long ago, in the top results, you’d have seen the likes of Gov.uk, Moneyhelper and Moneysaving expert dominating to top spots. Followed by the big brands in the space, like Sage and Xero.

Those big names are still there. But what’s new in the SERP is the addition of YouTube and forum responses. YouTube videos are now typically showing up at the very top of the SERP, and forums, like Reddit, are showing in the top half of page one.

Then we have the AI overview, which is an entirely different challenge.

At this stage, you might be asking, why does this all matter?

Why do you need digital PR?

Digital PR can bring a real boost for your business, in more ways than one.

Heightened online visibility

With the right coverage in the right places, combined with your own campaigns, content marketing and SEO best practices, you’ll start to see your name and your brand message gain real online traction.

Building any kind of meaningful and valuable visibility will take time and no uncertain amount of adaptability, as you’ll need to ensure your strategies are fluid enough to adapt to the constantly changing SEO landscape.

Quality content-marketing

Taking things one step further and embedding a strong content marketing thread can boost your digital PR efforts.

By creating valuable, timely and engaging content that enhances the audience experience, you’re giving yourself the best possible chance of standing out in a pretty noisy crowd. You need to give your potential customers a reason to remember you and a great piece of content can do just that.

More referral traffic

It sounds simplistic, but a greater online presence means more website traffic and the right type who are interested in what you have to offer.

What’s less simplistic is putting all the pieces of this particular puzzle together.

These broad and robust digital PR and digital marketing strategies, you’re putting yourself in the best possible position to turn lurkers into leads.

Measurable impact

Unlike traditional PR, it can be easier to assign a tangible impact to a digital PR campaign.

Links, buttons and calls to action can be individualised to any given piece of content. Social media marketing can show you, in real-time, the impact you’re having on your audiences. That kind of real-time feedback is powerful!

You can make use of Google Analytics to show which keywords are referring the most inbound traffic. You may even have a CRM system that shows you the referral location of every inbound lead.

The very nature of these digital channels is built to show ROI.

Make sure you’re investing in these because this work is going to take your business growth to the next level

Better brand building

All that online media coverage you’ll be gaining is building traction for your brand. This is going to compound over time.

We’re not just talking about search engine rankings and the results that Google Analytics are telling you. This isn’t a share of voice, it’s not quality content, nor is it how much media coverage you’ve had.

It’s a subtle outcome of all of the above.

It’s the sum total of all of your efforts, resulting in a powerful combination of name recognition and trust.

In summary

Digital public relations is as useful as it is critical.

The digital space is vast. Your target audience is being constantly bombarded with content and referrals from all angles. It’s up to you to put the steps in place to stand out.

Well, it’s not just up to you; we can help. We can help you establish the key performance indicators that set your platform for growth.

Our team of experts can help you develop and implement media relations strategies that put your name, front and centre in the sectors that matter most.

We can help you ideate and create killer content that can be activated across all your online platforms.

So, if you’d like to speak to us or find out more about the benefits of digital PR, then get in touch.