A layman's guide to Digital PR

Online PR

Online PR is sometimes used as a catch-all term to include all of the elements of digital PR from writing blogs to engaging with chat rooms. However, the term normally refers to activity surrounding online news reporting and online magazines.

News Sites and Bloggers

These are governed by editors who decide what to publish and how to publish it. Some news sites are solely online, whereas others such as the Guardian.co.uk are an almost identical reflection of their offline newspaper. The BBC is an example of a hybrid outlet that uses a combination of unique online material as well as material that is sourced from their offline media outputs.

If news sites are the reflections of newspapers then bloggers are the columnists. They comment and give opinion, sometimes across a wide range of issues, others being topic specific such as Tom Cannavan's Wine Pages. Similar to the news sites, all content is published at the discretion of the editor (in this case probably the individual blogger).

Where both of these media channels differ to offline content is the speed at which content is published, which in some cases can be almost instantaneous. In fact it's not unheard of for press releases to appear online without having been edited at all. Another difference between the online and offline media is that at the moment bloggers can often be more emotive and opinionated than their offline counterparts. This may be because they are enthusiastic amateurs (citizen journalists) rather than trained journalists, or because columnists are restricted by a house style and an editor who doesn't want to offend people. It may even be that the online world is simply a more informal and expressive place than the world of traditional media.

An effective PR or marketing campaign online will need to engage with the relevant news sites and the influential bloggers. Effective engagement will need to:

• Identify the bloggers and news sites - do they write about your industry / brand? Are they hostile, neutral, or positive to your message? Are they influential?
• Targeted message - Is the content and message suitably targeted for the individual news site or blogger? Do they prefer simple copy, or do they want video, audio and animation?
• Delivery - Is the material delivered in the appropriate way?

Social Media

Social media is an umbrella term which covers websites (or even areas of websites) that are dependent upon user generated content and user interaction. Some of the best known sites include Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo (social networking sites) Digg (social bookmarking) You Tube (video), LinkedIn (business networking) and Twitter (micro blogging). But there are forums and groups that cover almost any topic from wine tasting to ironing, and in addition many news sites and bloggers have an element of user generated content as most now have options to comment on individual stories or blogs.

Social media provides unique opportunities for brands to engage actively and directly with an audience

• Identify the social groups - you can guarantee that there will be groups that are positive about your industry or brand and those that are negative, sometimes in the extreme.
• A course of action - participation? Monitor the conversations? Ignore entirely? Form your own group? These are not necessarily mutually exclusive actions and a flexible approach is always possible.
• Useful places to hear what is being said about your brand.
• Transparency and legislation - it is not a good idea to pretend to be someone you're not. History shows that the backlash when you're found out outweighs any benefits gained beforehand. In addition, new legislation, Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, means such a course of action is now illegal.
  • There remains a lot to be clarified about this legislation.
  • Some legal commentators have suggested that even link building could be illegal but this requires a fairly extreme interpretation of the regulations that goes against the spirit of its intention.
  • Advertorials, for example, should be clearly labelled as advertising if they are to be legal. So far there seems little sign that publishers are paying any attention to this part of the regulations.
• Your own blog

Wikipedia and the world of wikis

• Wikis are collaborations, content is user generated but may be edited, removed or added to by other members.
• The most famous Wiki is Wikipedia, but there are also other well known wikis such as wikihow or wikiQ&A.
• Is there an opportunity to write about your brand on Wikipedia? Does your brand have a background story or history? Is your brand influential or innovative? What about the people on your team?
• Needs to conform to house style and be considered relevant. Brands, products or people must be deemed to merit inclusion or they will be removed.
• An alternative to Wikipedia is wikiHow. Which aims to become the "world's largest, highest quality how-to manual". Perhaps this is a place where you can share some of your expertise for the benefit of the world and your own brand.

Crisis PR

The internet offers some unique problems and some unique solutions when it comes to crisis PR. Unlike a newspaper which gets thrown away, when something appears online it can be there for a very long time. So what can be done about it?

• Offensive postings on a message board may be removed by a moderator that has been alerted to the post.
• If a trend or conversation appears to be developing which is negative, a brand may choose to step in and engage the conversation. This has similar advantages and limitations as a spokespersons response to an offline situation.
• Forum champions - if a brand can develop enough loyalty with users (even a select few) then they will often come to the defence of a brand under attack. This kind of reaction can be less inflammatory than direct involvement from the brand themselves.
• Positive content - in simple terms, drown out the negative content with positive content. This approach is most effective when used in conjunction with SEO to ensure that the positive content appears higher in a search engine's listings than they negative content.

Content Variety

Any digital PR campaign must be mindful of content. Unlike traditional media that rely on limited types of content - newspapers want copy and the occasional photo, TV wants footage - the internet has room for pretty much all of it: copy, images, videos, audio, animation, fact and comment.

• Identify the audience, identify the communicator - video, maps and interactive content can be used to create excitement and effective engagement. But if it is in an inappropriate medium for the audience or the communication channel then you may fail to engage at all.
• Creating new content or using content already available - creating a new video for a launch can be a powerful and effective tool, but don't discount the value of images, copy and press releases that you already have.
• Consider the requirements for specific digital PR campaign whenever a traditional PR is campaign is being planned. Simply posting press releases to a news site could be a waste of a fantastic opportunity.

SEO, Measurement and Monitoring

SEO and Digital PR

Content from a digital PR campaign should be viewed as having several functions. It may be to inform, it may be to develop the brand and build brand awareness, and it should also be a way to increase traffic to your website. The functions of Search Engine Optimisation and PR naturally work hand in hand. A fully optimised site requires content featuring relevant keywords, and it also needs other sites linking to it.

• Digital PR and SEO should be working with the same messaging.
• Bloggers, news sites and social media sites can all be a rich source of links.

Measurement and monitoring

As with traditional PR, Digital PR is most effective when monitoring and measurement is in place. Metrics that monitor individual website traffic are useful to identify the direct impact on a brand. Metrics that monitor an industry sector as a whole, such as the Search Market Audit, can demonstrate the effect of activity on the other brands or companies in a particular market space. Media monitoring is essential if a brand is to locate and capture all coverage and conversation surrounding the brand. These metrics will also be useful when identifying the communicators that are the most influential and need suitable targeting by any PR activity.

• Online metrics and monitoring enable you to control any Digital PR campaign.
• Online media monitoring needs to be looking at news sites, blogs, forums and networking sites if it is to be used for effective reputation management.
• Social media networks produce fan groups and critics alike. You may want to engage with some of them, you may want to simply watch them or you may want to ignore them. You can only make informed decisions if you are monitoring what is being said and have the tools to assess their influence.

Proactive or Reactive PR

Digital PR can be split into two broad categories, proactive PR and reactive PR

Proactive PR

This is most easily thought of as the planned campaign. Elements involved in this will be formulating the message, preparing messaging materials and distribution

• Many brands are still approaching digital PR as an afterthought to their offline efforts.
• At its most basic this means making sure your press release makes it to the digital news sites and the bloggers. But to make the most of the internet in order to communicate your message a digital campaign should be planned when the main campaign is planned. In particular consideration should be given to content - what about prepared interviews on video or audio? What about graphics? Is there a way of introducing interactivity?
• Should content be going to social media groups that are interested in your brand? How else can you get them involved?

Reactive PR and Social Media Monitoring

Reactive PR is only possible with at least some kind of media monitoring, after all if you don't know what's being said about your brand, you can't respond to it. In the offline world, there is normally a right to reply - a letter to a magazine or a comment to a journalist - in the world of social media there is the option to engage in the conversation. Social media monitoring can additionally be used by brands at 3 different levels, at a strategic level for market research, for communicating the brand message or at the micro level for customer services allowing them to deal with specific individual situations.

• The strategic level - a great opportunity for research, what is being said on the forums and in the blogosphere? What do people like and dislike what does this mean for the brand in the next couple of years?
• Brand reputation - What is the conversation surrounding the brand? Can we influence the conversation? Are there positive conversations which we need to foster or negative conversations that need containing. Brands should be thinking about supplying material to the positive voices much as they supply recognised journalists and bloggers.
• Customer Services - At the micro level there may be particular conversations that are firmly in the remit of customer services. For example those that start with something like "So last week I bought a car and it broke down on the way home". Stories like this get passed on very quickly. They can gather momentum very quickly, or, they can be turned into a positive experience with a bit of timely and positive intervention.
  • This is an intense form of monitoring and intervention but there are brands that are doing this very successfully. One approach is to create a specific brand forum where people can engage with the brand and the brand can respond.