How can Digital PR Improve Your Brand's Presence in 2023?

 The best PR agencies use a mix of traditional tactics and digital PR services to get the best outcomes. The truth though is digital PR campaigns often give brands a much greater reach and access a far bigger audience. In fact, a staggering 86% of marketing professionals have increased brand awareness using just one or more digital marketing channels. This makes digital PR a powerful way to improve your brand’s presence.

What is digital PR?

Although traditional and digital PR have similar goals, the way they achieve them are vastly different. Both of them are all about enhancing a brand's reputation and raising brand awareness. Traditional PR will often look to secure coverage and raise brand awareness through well-placed press releases in target publications. 

PR is always changing though. A digital PR campaign will use all of the new opportunities and channels afforded by the rise of digital. This may involve content marketing, social media and search engine optimisation (SEO) linking into a wider digital marketing strategy. These days, we judge a campaign by the results, which may include referral traffic, brand mentions and the quality of links.

In general, digital PR strategy helps firms connect with more individuals and cultivate more sincere bonds with their target audience. Also, it gives brands a better means of establishing credibility and trust. Digital PR is no longer an extra for brands, but rather a must for driving growth and building brand awareness across digital channels.

How do the recent Google updates affect digital PR in 2023?

 All brands need to focus on creating quality content to form a successful online marketing and digital PR strategy. It forms part of most PR tactics. However, making this content and getting ranked in the SERPs is getting more unpredictable. SEO success is not easy, another reason why an SEO strategy is so important.

In the last year alone, there have been nine confirmed updates to Google’s algorithm. Every update leaves businesses, digital PR specialists and content creators scratching their heads as Google changes the rules.

In particular, Google’s 2022 updates surrounding content and spam make digital media coverage of PR more important than ever before. Those updates include:

The link spam update

Google finished rolling out their link spam update in December 2022. The update neutralises, or no longer counts, links that Google finds to be spammy. All links will now need to be natural and adhere to Google’s webmaster guidelines.

The helpful content update

This update aims to reward helpful content and connect people to relevant websites with better information. The algorithm update introduced a new ranking signal to devalue content primarily written for search engines and not users.

The updates signify that Google is consistently putting people first. Content that is helpful, informative and of value to a target audience will generate more organic traffic and rank relevant links higher. The algorithm will no longer tolerate websites that buy links or sites used for the sole purpose of passing outgoing links.

What doesChatGPT have to do with it?

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot created by OpenAI for online customer care. It provides prompt, effective responses to questions asked by the user.

AI has become such a clever tool that many people are turning to ChatGPT to help write high quality articles, a blog post, press releases and even give guidance on creative content campaigns.

There is still cause for fear, even though Google has stated that they are not against all AI-generated content. It is obvious that spammy, AI-generated content made purposefully to skew search results violates their Webmaster Guidelines.

Therefore, a digital PR strategy focused on relevant, high-quality content will always produce better outcomes with Google.

How can a digital PR agency improve your brand’s presence?

Digital PR is a powerful tool that has great benefits for brands and organisations. It can help with reaching your target audience, raising brand awareness, and enhancing your reputation. Digital PR is designed to increase the presence and awareness of your brand, and it can accomplish this in the following ways:

Increasing Website Traffic

Digital PR producing quality content will give your brand better visibility and credibility. This will help you rank higher on search engines and gain high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites.

Your brand will then have improved domain authority, more organic search traffic, and ultimately a higher level of trust in your website.

Greater Engagement on Social Media Platforms

Social media has had a huge impact on both traditional PR and digital public relations. With instant messages, direct interactions with audiences, and plenty of opportunities to increase brand awareness, being mentioned online on social media makes your public relations much stronger. It’s a crucial part of creating your online identity and reaching your target audiences.

What makes digital PR important is its versatility - it can also support your social media marketing strategy. It can help in developing your message and sharing it with a larger audience. It can also be a real help with managing crises in real-time. Build solid relationships with your potential customers here, and you'll see results in the future. Also, it can aid in real-time crisis management. Here, establish connections with your consumers and audiences to reap the benefits.

Establish Yourself as an Industry Authority

Building authority and becoming a credible source within your sector is a great way to convince people to invest in your brand. You need to earn authority though, often through thought leadership campaigns. Digital PR strategies can equip you with the third-party validation needed to become an authoritative, credible voice.

Developing ties with other reputable organisations and writing high-quality blog entries are just two examples of the digital PR strategies that can help create brand awareness and establish authority. Influencer marketing can also help you build credibility and develop a more trustworthy image of your brand.

Lead to More Sales and Leads

Digital PR tactics alone won't get you a sale. but they can create the environment necessary to nudge customers into purchasing. Digital PR specialists can raise brand awareness and create brand trust, and trust is a critical element for sales. In fact, 90% of consumers are willing to pay more with a brand they trust.

Create a Better Image for Your Brand

Increasing visibility and fostering a positive brand reputation are the two main goals of digital PR. A good digital PR campaign can do this in many ways. Through social and online media monitoring, you can maintain control over your brand's online visibility and overall brand image. It can also generate positive mentions and conduct crisis control so that your brand maintains a positive image over the long term.

Generate Higher-Quality Backlinks

Digital PR strategies and link building go hand in hand - it's one of the key benefits. Gain backlinks and secure high authority links and increase your search rankings.

Digital PR will enable you to make and share linkable assets to make it easier to earn credible backlinks to your website on online publications. It will also help you establish brand credibility and authority to earn non-paid third-party endorsements and boost your SEO rankings.