Digital PR is more than just a buzzword. It’s the key to success for just about any individual or business in today’s modern world. It swaps traditional PR strategies like manual outreach for newspaper and magazine features for search engine optimization, social media, web development, online reviews, influencer campaigns, and videos.

Without it, it can be a real challenge to meet (or even exceed) your goals as a brand, whether you’re a restaurant owner, author, hair salon, dry cleaning company, or whoever you may be. Let’s dive deeper into several of the many reasons Digital PR is so important.

1. Builds Brand Awareness & Identity

One of the major goals of Digital PR is to build brand awareness with your audience. Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are familiar with your brand. So if you open an Asian fusion restaurant in Chicago, a strategic Digital PR strategy can inform your community and get you noticed. It’s important that while promoting your brand in the digital sphere, you must offer insight into what your brand’s identity is: what your company mission is, how you can showcase your expertise, and how you can shed light on what sets you apart from competitors.

2. Fosters Customer Relationships

Successful and strong customer relationships go hand in hand. The more authentic your brand is, the more likely you are to foster strong relationships with current and prospective customers.

Digital PR strategies such as social media management, promoting online reviews, and influencer campaigns can allow these types of relationships to come to fruition. When users are researching your brand, one of their first places to look is on social media. If your brand has loads of followers and your brand is actively posting, and responding to comments, your brand is perceived as more trustworthy, authentic, and personable.

3. Improves Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings are more important today than ever before. If a prospective customer goes to Google and searches for an “Asian fusion restaurant in Chicago,” you want to make sure your restaurant appears on page 1. A ranking on page 2, 3, or 4 won’t get them in the door.

Same goes with all industries, whether you’re an internet marketing agency or a personal injury attorney, being on page one is a MUST!

The age-old joke goes… “Where do you hide a dead body?” “The second page of Google”

Additionally, Digital PR involves optimizing business’s websites from top to bottom with the following strategies and tactics:

• Adding structured data (JSON Schema Code)
• Adding meta data
• Content marketing
• Link building
• Removing broken links
• Adding a sitemap
• Optimizing content with header tags and internal linking
• And, much more

 

4. Enhances Brand Reputation with Crisis Management

For individuals and brands alike, you can’t always control what life throws at you. Whether you were involved in a scandal and written about in a newspaper or if an unhappy customer leaves your business a nasty review, Google doesn’t just let you “Control Z” (undo) or delete from the search results and review sites. Google’s main goal is to provide users with valuable information to their queries, so it can be difficult to get rid of those negative assets others have left for you to clean up the mess.

Fortunately, having a verified Google My Business account, having reviews on authoritative sites like Yelp and Facebook, influencer videos from people who love your brand, and being active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and other platforms all have a positive effect on your rankings.

With Digital PR, we can utilize SEO, social media, digital press releases, and more to CONTROL brand reputation and individual reputation online. It’s possible to shape your brand’s digital footprint and suppress negative assets, reviews, feedback, and other assets so users aren’t misinformed.

5. Generates Leads & Sales

As we’ve discussed, Digital PR strategies help brands to boost their search rankings, increase brand exposure, and boost visibility. Not only are brands taking control of their digital footprint, but they are using digital marketing strategies to get it done, which results in increased conversions, leads, sales, and other factors that will help benefit your business.

By boosting search rankings, building a loyal social media following, syndicating Digital press releases on the wire, and more, there is inevitably an increase of website traffic and conversions that result.

Digital PR is Here To Stay

While Digital PR has recently picked up traction, we don’t see it slowing down any time soon. In fact, it will likely become more important and evolve as time goes on. If you’d like to set your brand up for success, you owe it to yourself to jump on the Digital PR bandwagon as soon as you can.