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Cedarwood Appoints New Head Of Digital PR

Manchester’s Cedarwood Digital has appointed Matt Thompson as its Head of Digital PR.

Matt brings over a decade of experience to the role, having previously worked at iProspect, Open Partners and THG.

“It’s an exciting time to be joining Cedarwood,” Thompson said. “The team are already producing some fantastic work, with a whole host of recent award wins under their belt. I’m looking forward to driving things forward, helping grow the team as well as our clients’ businesses.”

Amanda Walls, director of Cedarwood Digital, added: “The past 12 months have seen our digital PR team go from strength to strength, and we’ve got big plans for the future. Matt’s experience in launching new products, as well as growing existing channels, will play a key role as we look to further expand our offering to be truly market leading.”

Founded in 2016, Cedarwood Digital works with a diverse array of national clients to enhance their business’ visibility online through organic, earned and paid channels.

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Cedarwood Win Two UK Digital PR Awards!

We’re delighted to win not one, but two awards at the UK Digital PR Awards yesterday!

We took home:

🏆Digital PR Agency Of The Year

🏆Digital PR Campaign Of The Year – E-commerce

 

Here’s what the judges had to say:

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Digital PR has been a huge area of success for Cedarwood over the last 12 months, so we’re over the moon that this is now being recognised in such a competitive space🎉.

A big congrats to the team, for all their hard work! 👏

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Five Key Tips To Create An Effective Digital PR Campaign

Digital PR has been a buzzword in the world of online marketing for quite a while now and it’s a popular marketing approach for businesses who are looking to grow their online profile while also landing important links back to their website. 

Here at Cedarwood, digital PR has always been an important part of our service offering, not just for the visibility that it garners for our clients, but also for the positive impact it can have on SEO campaigns and as a result we have a lot of experience (over seven years direct experience in fact!) in rolling out effective digital PR campaigns. 

Although it is one of the more popular approaches within the SEO mix, digital PR is something which if not done properly can fail to have the desired impact – so below we’ve included some top tips on how you can go about creating an effective digital PR campaign.

The importance of Digital PR

Before we dive into five key tips to creating an effective digital PR campaign, let’s first look at why digital PR is important and how it can help you to achieve your goals across both SEO and also improving overall awareness.

Digital PR is important because it can help businesses achieve a number of goals, including:

➡️ Increase brand awareness: When your brand is featured in high-quality, relevant publications, it can help to raise awareness of your company and its products or services. This can lead to increased traffic to your website, more leads, and ultimately, more sales.

➡️ Generate leads: A well-executed digital PR campaign can also help to generate leads for your business. When journalists and other influencers write about your company, they often include a call to action, such as a link to your website or a way to sign up for your email list. This can help you to capture the contact information of potential customers who are interested in learning more about what you have to offer.

➡️ Improve SEO: When your brand is mentioned in high-quality, relevant publications, it can help to improve your website’s search engine ranking. This is because search engines take into account the number and quality of backlinks to a website when ranking it in search results.

➡️ Build relationships with journalists and influencers: Digital PR can also help you to build relationships with journalists and other influencers in your industry. These relationships can be valuable assets for your business, as they can help you to get your company featured in the media and reach a wider audience.

There’s a lot of value that you can add to your overall marketing mix with digital PR but it’s important to understand how it fits in with a broader marketing mix, so that you can understand how to utilise it effectively.

Five Key Tips

  1. Start With Your Strategy

Strategy plays a key role within your digital PR campaigns and understanding your client’s audience, the current landscape and the type of content that will resonate with your audience (and journalists!) is important to driving success. 

So let’s start off with some key considerations and questions to ask around your digital PR strategy:

➡️ Your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your digital PR campaign? What are their interests? What are their pain points?

➡️ Your goals: What do you want to achieve with your digital PR campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Generate leads? Improve SEO?

➡️ Your key messages: What are the key messages you want to communicate with your digital PR campaign? What do you want journalists and influencers to take away from your story?

➡️Your content: What type of content will you create for your digital PR campaign? Will you write blog posts? Create infographics? Produce videos?

➡️Your distribution strategy: How will you distribute your content? Will you share it on social media? Submit it to media outlets? Pitch it to influencers?

➡️ Your measurement strategy: How will you measure the success of your digital PR campaign? Will you track website traffic? Leads generated? SEO ranking?

It might seem like a lot, but putting time into understanding your target audience, goals and distribution strategy will save you a lot of time further down the line so invest the time early on to ensure you are driving maximum efficiency through your campaigns. 

2. Do You Research

Undertaking research at the start of a digital PR campaign is another way to ensure you save time further down the line, don’t repeat stories which have already been covered and really maximise your outreach capacity and capabilities. 

When you’re doing your research for a digital PR campaign, there are a few key things to keep in mind:

➡️ Identify your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your campaign? What are their interests? What publications do they read? What influencers do they follow?

➡️ Identify the right publications and influencers: Once you know who your target audience is, you can start to identify the right publications and influencers to reach out to. Consider the following factors when making your selection:

➡️ Relevance: The publication or influencer should be relevant to your target audience.

➡️ Reach: The publication or influencer should have a large enough audience to reach your target audience.

➡️ Credibility: The publication or influencer should be credible and respected by your target audience.

➡️Find out what they’ve written about in the past: Take a look at the publications and influencers you’ve identified and see what they’ve written about in the past. This will give you a good idea of their style, their interests, and the types of stories they’re interested in.

➡️ Find out how to contact them: Once you’ve identified the right publications and influencers, you need to find out how to contact them. This may involve finding their email address, phone number, or social media profiles.

By doing your research, you can increase your chances of success with your digital PR campaign.

Here are some additional tips for doing your research:

➡️ Use online tools: There are a number of online tools that can help you with your research, such as Google News, Cision, and Meltwater. These tools can help you to find relevant publications, influencers, and stories.

➡️ Talk to people in your industry: Talk to people in your industry who are familiar with digital PR. They can share their insights and advice with you.

➡️ Attend industry events: Attending industry events is a great way to meet journalists and influencers and learn more about their needs.

Taking additional time to thoroughly research all of the above and build your contact list can really help when it comes to outreaching the campaigns, so make sure you put the groundwork in before you start building the campaigns to maximise the success.

3. Create High Quality Content

If you want journalists to link to your website then you need to generate great content which gives them a reason to link to it. So whether it’s a data piece, a piece of thought leadership or just something of genuine interest to the user, make sure that the content you create is relevant, up to date and most importantly, within the user interest. 

Great content for Digital PR comes in a number of different formats and can include:

➡️ Data-driven content: This type of content uses data and statistics to tell a story. It can be very persuasive and can help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. For example, you could create a blog post that analyzes industry trends or a report that provides insights into your target audience.

➡️ Compelling visuals: Images, infographics, and videos can be very effective at engaging your audience and driving traffic to your website. Make sure your visuals are high-quality and relevant to your content.

➡️ Interviews and thought leadership pieces: Interviews with experts in your industry can be a great way to generate backlinks and establish yourself as a thought leader. You could also write thought leadership pieces that share your insights on industry trends or best practices.

➡️ Case studies: Case studies can be a great way to demonstrate the value of your products or services. They can also help you generate leads and build relationships with potential customers.

➡️ Trendjacking: Trendjacking is the practice of capitalizing on current trends to create content that is relevant and timely. This can be a great way to generate buzz for your brand and attract new customers.

Undertaking the first two steps will help you to better understand the audience and it’s important to keep this in mind when creating high quality content to ensure that when you outreach it to journalists it’s going to be relevant to both their audience and yours.

4. Promote Your Content

In the simplest terms promoting your content is essentially outreaching it – getting it in front of journalists to ensure that you get the right level of coverage for your client, at the right time. The promotion of the content is almost as important as the quality of the content if not more so, as it doesn’t matter how great your content is, if no one sees it then it will have no impact on your overall marketing efforts! 

When outreaching to journalists the first step is to create an effective media list – remember – you don’t have to include everyone on your media list, rather focus on the contacts that count, people who are likely to cover your story or who have a genuine interest in what you are doing. 

Here are some top tips to land coverage with journalists:

➡️ Do your research. Before you reach out to any journalists, take the time to learn about their work and their audience. What kind of stories do they typically write? What are their interests? Once you have a good understanding of their needs, you can tailor your pitch accordingly.

➡️ Make a great first impression. Your subject line is the first thing a journalist will see, so make sure it’s clear, concise, and attention-grabbing. The body of your email should also be well-written and engaging. Get to the point quickly and clearly, and make sure your pitch is relevant to the journalist’s interests.

➡️ Be helpful and responsive. If a journalist is interested in your story, be prepared to provide them with all the information they need. This includes high-quality images, videos, and other supporting materials. Be responsive to their questions and requests, and make sure they have everything they need to move forward with the story.

➡️ Be patient. It takes time to build relationships with journalists. Don’t expect to get a response from every pitch you send out. Just keep pitching good stories, and eventually you’ll start to get results.

You won’t always get it right first time, but taking your time to build out media lists & prepare them effectively will play a key role in ensuring that you are maximising the most of your opportunity. 

It’s also important to stand out – in a crowded area where journalists receive hundreds of PR pitches each day, how do you make sure that you stand out from the crowd?

➡️ Personalize your pitches. Don’t just send out a generic email to a list of journalists. Take the time to address each journalist by name and tailor your pitch to their specific interests.

➡️ Offer exclusive content. If you can offer journalists exclusive content, they’ll be more likely to take a look at your pitch. This could be a press release, a white paper, or even an interview with an expert.

➡️Be persistent. If you don’t hear back from a journalist right away, don’t give up. Follow up with them a few days later to see if they have any questions.

Timing is also key – ensuring that you outreach at the right time to the right person plays a key role in getting the coverage that you are looking for.

5. Measure Results

Measuring results and evaluating your digital PR campaigns plays a key role in ensuring that you get the most out of them and that you can take learnings to continue to evolve and improve your offering. Digital PR is constantly changing and evolving, so staying on top of your game is key and ensuring that your clients understand the value of what you are offering plays a key role in ensuring that you’re showcasing the value that you are bringing.

To start with, you need to be clear about what you want to measure, approaches here include:

➡️ Set clear goals: Before you launch your campaign, set clear goals for what you want to achieve. This will help you track your progress and measure your success.

➡️ Use a variety of metrics: Don’t rely on just one metric to measure the impact of your campaign. Use a variety of metrics to get a more complete picture of your results.

➡️Track your results over time: Don’t just measure the impact of your campaign at the end. Track your results over time to see how your campaign is performing.

➡️Make adjustments as needed: If you’re not seeing the results you want, make adjustments to your campaign strategy.

Don’t be afraid to make updates and changes as you need – this will help you to ensure you keep firmly fixed on the overall goal of delivering value to your clients and the reach/coverage that they want. 

You can use a number of different ways to measure from a metric perspective, but here are some of the most common metrics:

➡️ Media coverage: This is the most basic metric, and it simply measures the number of articles, blog posts, and other pieces of media that mention your brand.

➡️ Link building: This metric measures the number of links to your website from other websites. Links are important for SEO, so this metric can give you an idea of how well your campaign is helping to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

➡️Social media engagement: This metric measures the number of likes, shares, and comments on your social media posts. It’s a good way to measure how well your campaign is resonating with your target audience.

➡️Brand awareness: This metric measures how well people know your brand. You can measure brand awareness through surveys, polls, and social media analytics.

➡️Website traffic: This metric measures the number of people who visit your website. It’s a good way to measure the overall impact of your campaign, as more traffic means more people are learning about your brand.

Whichever you use, it’s important to remember that you always need to be linking it back to revenue and results for your client – these are there key business metrics, so make sure to keep in mind how it closely links back to what your client is looking to achieve.

Final Thoughts

In addition to everything that we have mentioned above, at the end of the day an effective digital PR campaign all comes down to whether the user consumes it, engages with it and feels something for it – after all we are trying to create something which sits within the human interest angle. 

Keeping this in mind, additional elements which will play in to the success of your campaigns include:

  • The quality of your relationships with journalists
  • Your ability to generate buzz and excitement around your content
  • Your ability to adapt your strategy as the campaign progresses.

Each of these play their own important role in ensuring that your campaigns get off the ground, so in addition to some great planning and activation make sure you take the time to build the relationships and research the impact of your content – this is essential to gaining that all important coverage!

To find out more about how we can help you with your digital PR campaigns, get in touch! 

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Cedarwood Wins Two European Search Awards!

We were absolutely delighted to take home TWO awards at the European Search Awards in Lisbon last night! Hosted at the beautiful Patio De Gale it was great to see everyone come together in a celebration of search across Europe!

On the night we took home:

📣 Best Small Integrated Agency
📣 Best Use Of PR In Search

Absolutely delighted to take home two awards to showcase the great year that Cedarwood has had and was lovely to catch up with other agencies & brands during the night! 

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Cedarwood Wins Digital PR Campaign Of The Year 2023!

💥We’re Winners!💥

We are thrilled to announce that Cedarwood has won the Digital PR Campaign of the Year award at the PR Moment Awards 2023 for our outstanding work with Little Loans. Our team of digital PR experts, including Alex, Amber, Beth & Elle, put in tremendous effort to bring this campaign to life and we are proud to see their hard work being recognised.

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Digital PR has been a significant area of success for us at Cedarwood in the past 12 months. This award, in addition to our recognition at the UK Search Awards, we are delighted that we have also been recognised for this directly within the PR space.

The judges were impressed by our well-researched and well-thought-out campaign, which produced excellent results. Our team worked closely with Little Loans to create a unique campaign that not only raised their brand awareness but also increased their online visibility. 

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Brighton SEO Deck: Using Digital PR To Enhance Your E-E-A-T Signals

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of speaking at Brighton SEO’s Online PR Show, along with a great line up of speakers, talking about all things Online PR and beyond!

My deck, entitled “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your E-E-A-T Signals” was designed to explore how Digital PR can and should be utilised to enhance those all important E-E-A-T signals that Google is looking for on a website, in addition to looking through some case studies of where we had used it effectively, with great impact.

This deck is particularly useful for clients who sit within the YMYL industry (of which we have quite a few!) where the importance of key trust and expertise signals become even more important due to Google holding the website to a much higher quality standard.

Some key takeaways from the talk include:

👻 Use your client’s expertise to generate great outreach ideas – focus on the key strengths of your spokespeople to understand the types of publications and areas you might want to cover & what they might be best suited to (and also most likely to be seen as an expert for!)

👻 Use Reverse Digital PR as a way of getting clients to come to you, rather than having to go to them, this is also a great way to establish yourself as a credible resource and it’s the gift that keeps on giving as journalists will continue to find and use this source over time.

👻 Think outside the box, if you can’t get any real life ways to showcase your expertise then innovate – look at soaps or fictional situations where you can demonstrate your expertise and still build those key signals

👻 Get your news listening right – digest news, as much as you can and get your news listening set up so that you are ready to jump on topical trends – this will help you to be first to the conversation when you need to be.

It was a great day with a range of great speakers & for anyone who missed the event you can catch it online again in the next couple of weeks or in the Brighton SEO vault! You can also view my slide deck here

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Cedarwood Nominated For 12 European Search Awards

Delighted to kick off the week by announcing that we have been nominated for 12 European Search Awards, it’s great to see everyone’s hard work rewarded over the last 12 months & to be recognised for some of the great client achievements we’ve had in this time!

Some of our nominations include:

🍉 Best SEO Agency
🍉 Best Use Of PR In Search
🍉 Best Use Of Search (Finance)
🍉 Best SEO Campaign
🍉 Best PPC Campaign

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the event in Lisbon in May! ☀️ 🍷🍹 You can find a full list of nominations here

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Digital PR: The Importance Of Deeper Page Link Building

Link acquisition has been around in many forms for years and has often been seen as one of the most important elements within an SEO campaign. Links are a great way to showcase to Google that people trust your website and find it useful – after all they are linking to it – and they’re also a great way to drive referral visitors to your website, in addition to building a great neighbourhood for your website to be in – but it’s not enough to just build links into your website and leave it at that, you need a strategy to maximise the impact of link building by looking at which pages you are directing your links into.

Many people focus exclusively on building links to the homepage, but in many instances this misses out a lot of value that can be created from deeper page linking.

Deeper page linking is something that has been discussed widely – but in practice it’s something that we need to actively incorporate into our campaigns. We can help to guide this by developing effective/thematic strategies to target specific sections of our website with targeted campaign to help grow authority within these sections and improve overall performance.

Why Is Deeper Page Linking Important?

So you might be asking – is it not enough for me just to build great links into my website? While building great quality links into a website definitely helps performance, if we look at the mechanisms of link flow and equity we can see why targeting these campaigns to specific sections can help to add value.

Think of your website as one entity – any link juice that comes into that entity is received by the page the link is pointing to – as such, if 80% of your links point into your homepage then this will likely be one of the strongest pages on your website. This is great if you want your homepage to rank well, but in most instances, the pages with the best user intent match and the pages we want our users to go to sit further within our website, usually on product or service pages – and these are the areas we really want to give an equity boost.

With so many pages often on your website and usually some form of navigation to link all your key pages to the homepage, by the time you get to these pages a lot of link equity has been lost along the way and therefore the value from these links can often be heavily deprecated from what it was when it initially reached the website – as such, the value of getting link equity from the homepage to your sub-pages is far less than getting value directly from the source – hence deeper page linking is a popular option. By building the link directly to the page you are maximising the equity that you are passing to this page and helping to give that sub-section a boost.

Building links to deeper pages on your website can provide several benefits for your SEO strategy. One of the most significant advantages is the improved visibility and authority of individual pages on your site. When you build links to deeper pages, you signal to search engines that these pages are valuable and relevant, which can boost their rankings in search results.

This is especially important for websites with a large number of pages, as it can be difficult for search engines to identify and prioritize the most important pages on the site. By building links to deeper pages, you can help to ensure that these pages are given the attention they deserve.

Another benefit of deeper page link building is the potential to increase traffic, conversions, and revenue. When you improve the rankings of individual pages on your site, you make it more likely that people will find and visit those pages. This can lead to increased engagement with your content, more leads or sales, and ultimately a stronger bottom line.

How Do I Know Which Pages To Target?

If you aren’t sure which pages to target then a good start is to look at the pages that you are trying to rank/optimise or the pages that are the most valuable/important on your website.

There are several techniques and tools that you can use to identify which pages on your website to build links to for SEO. Here are a few:

💡 Analyze your website’s analytics data: One of the best places to start is by analyzing your website’s analytics data to identify which pages are already receiving the most traffic. By building links to these pages, you can help to improve their rankings and drive even more traffic to your site. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics can provide you with detailed information about your website’s traffic, including which pages are the most popular.

💡 Use a backlink analysis tool: Another option is to use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to identify which pages on your site are already receiving links from other websites. These tools can help you to identify the most authoritative and relevant pages on your site, as well as opportunities for building additional links.

💡 Conduct keyword research: Conducting keyword research can also be helpful in identifying which pages on your site to target with link building. By identifying the keywords that are most relevant to your business and your audience, you can create content that targets those keywords and build links to the pages that contain that content. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and SEMrush Keyword Research can help you identify relevant keywords.

💡 Conduct a content audit: Conducting a content audit of your website can also be helpful in identifying which pages to target with link building. By reviewing your existing content and identifying gaps or opportunities for improvement, you can create new content that is optimized for search engines and build links to those pages.

Overall, there are many techniques and tools available to help you identify which pages on your website to target with link building for SEO. By taking a strategic approach and focusing on building links to your most authoritative and relevant pages, you can improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.

What Tools Can I Use To Evaluate Which Pages I Should Build Links To?

There are several tools you can use to evaluate which pages you should build links to for SEO. Here are a few options:

💡 Ahrefs: A popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze the backlinks of your competitors and see which pages are getting the most links. You can also use it to analyze your own website and identify pages that are lacking in backlinks.

💡 SEMrush: Another popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze backlinks and identify the most important pages on your website. You can also use it to track your rankings and monitor your competitors.

💡 Moz: This tool provides a backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.

💡 Majestic: This tool has a comprehensive backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.

💡 Google Search Console: This free tool from Google provides insights into your website’s performance, including which pages are receiving the most traffic and which pages are linking to your site. This can help you identify pages that are important for SEO and prioritize them for link building efforts.

Ultimately, the best tool for evaluating which pages to build links to will depend on your specific needs and preferences. You may want to try out a few different options to find the one that works best for you.

How Do I Get Started?

It’s not hard to get started with deeper link building, with a couple of quick steps. Firstly, identify the pages on your website where you need to build internal authority, secondly create effective digital PR campaigns to drive links into these and finally, outreach your great campaigns. In no time you’ll be building authority into the website and reaping the rewards of it.

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Director Amanda Speaking @ Brighton SEO!

We’re delighted to announce that our Director Amanda Walls will be speaking at the April Brighton SEO event in front of an audience of thousands talking everything SEO & Digital PR.

Amanda will be speaking on the Wednesday afternoon at the Online PR Show with her talk discussing “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your EEAT Signals” – a great talk for anyone looking to use digital PR to enhance their overall SEO – or for anyone who particularly works in a YMYL industry, where this is held to an even higher standard – to get a better understanding of how they can utilise digital PR in this way.

The talk will have:

💥 Lots of great Case Studies which show how digital PR can help boost your SEO

💥 Great ideas on how to think outside of the box when it comes to newsjacking & thought leadership

💥Insight into why digital PR matters for EEAT

💥 Ideas on how to get journalists to come to you!

So if that sounds of interest get yourself booked on or check the talk out online when an online version of the conference day is released the week after.

To find out more about schedules on the day or to book your ticket click here: https://brightonseo.com/event/online-pr-show/

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Traditional PR Vs Digital PR: What’s The Difference?

Digital PR is probably one of the most popular services that we offer at Cedarwood and we were early to market with this product – starting our offering back when our business began around seven years ago. Back then, Digital PR was referred to as “link building” (they are very different!), certainly wasn’t the buzzword it was today and it was a rare occurrence in a world of paid for link acquisition.

Today, thanks to the rise of Google tightening its link spam algorithms and a number of agencies (and SEO experts) championing the values of Digital PR, we find that EVERYONE is talking about it (even John Mueller!) – but we still find that in many situations when we are approached by clients they can be a little unsure as to what it is and how it differs from traditional PR.

So let’s take a look at what Digital PR is, how it differs from traditional PR and how you can combine tactics from both to deliver a great link acquisition campaign.

What Is Digital PR?

Digital PR is an online form of PR, which essentially looks to promote visibility and awareness for your business through digital platforms and online. Digital PR takes a lot of the elements from traditional PR and puts an online spin on them – so that still includes coverage for your clients, increasing brand awareness and making sure that you land all important links, but with digital PR you really have to consider what is going to land in the online space. 

Digital PR is a slightly different skill set because it’s really focuses on online only with offline being a secondary consideration. It’s widely used for businesses that are online first and are looking to gain traction amongst their target audience as well as build those all-important links back to their website.

What Is Traditional PR?

By contrast, traditional PR has more of an offline focus or as you could say a combined focus, think events activation, newspapers, integrated campaigns, tv, radio, newspapers, billboards – everything that you have come to associate with this timeless form of PR. That’s not to say that you can’t combine elements of this for a very effective Digital PR campaign – it’s more that these are what you would traditionally associate with a Digital PR campaign. 

Traditional PR doesn’t necessarily focus on attracting a digital presence and as such, for businesses that are online only it can often be seen as missing their target demographic. That said, there is no reason why traditional PR techniques can’t be used effectively to help drive success across Digital PR campaigns.

What Is The Biggest Difference?

The biggest difference between traditional and digital PR is the platform that it’s generally targeted at, with traditional PR focused on a more traditional offline audience, whereas digital PR being targeted at a predominantly online audience. It’s this targeting strategy that also contributes to whether or not one is more effective than the other for your ideal audience. 

There are many other differences between traditional and digital PR including:

  • Feedback & engagement – due to the advent of online “comment” posts it’s a lot easier to get feedback on your content through Digital PR than it is through traditional PR, this can give you a good insight as to how your content has performed and also inspire you if you are to continue with that type of content in the future
  • Audience sizes – although traditional PR can give you a good audience size, the digital world is infinitely larger and digital campaigns can reach an international audience at a much greater scale than a traditional campaign.
  • Intent & Interest-Based targeting – one of the main differences between digital and traditional PR is the ways you can target your audience. With Digital PR you have the option to choose between interest and intent-based audiences – that’s the option to actually put your product in front of the user at the time they are searching for it, whereas with traditional PR this is mostly limited to the user’s interest by placing it within a specific magazine or publication
  • Purpose – the purpose of the two campaigns is often very different. In a lot of instances, Digital PR is designed to drive visitors and awareness to a website – and in many cases to support SEO through effective and targeted link acquisition. By contrast, traditional PR can be more about brand awareness and driving visibility – it can also be used as a direct sales platform but this is often slightly more difficult to attribute.
  • Measurement – Last but not least, one of the main differences between digital and traditional PR is the way that you measure it. Digital PR is in most instances a little easier to measure – you can rack based on link and link quality as well as reach and various other key metrics, traditional PR by contrast is just that little bit more difficult to measure – but it can still be done by coverage, reach etc… 

Does This Change The Skill Set?

Many people think that you need a completely different skill set for traditional digital PR and this isn’t entirely true – but it definitely helps to have the online connections and contacts when you are trying to run a digital PR campaign. Digital PR is also incredibly fast paced and there are elements like newsjacking which do require experience and also an understanding of where to go to seek out an effective story – as a result this can become an important skill set to develop if you are looking to make the transition from traditional through to digital PR.

Are Traditional PR Skills Transferable to Digital PR?

100% you can transfer many traditional PR skills over to digital PR very effectively, but it’s important as with any campaign to take the time to understand what the client is trying to achieve with their campaign – and it might be that with digital PR that differs from what a standard traditional PR client is looking to achieve.

There are also a number of super valuable skills that traditional PRs can bring over to digital PR, in particular established journalist relationships – many of whom may now work for digital publications in addition to traditional offline publications and many of whom will have stories that they have written for print published online. In addition, an eye for a good story/angle in addition to a strong press release hook and timing for outreach are all important skills for digital PR which are carried across from traditional PR.

Is Digital PR More Popular Than Traditional PR?

I wouldn’t say that one type of PR is necessarily more popular than the other, but it would be fair to say that digital PR has seen a significant rise in interest over the last 24 months mainly due to its support for SEO and also that it has a proven track record of helping businesses to grow particularly in the online space.

The trend of digital PR took off massively during COVID-19 when businesses were forced online due to physical stores and properties being closed. At this time, people were looking for ways online to market their products and services – predominantly as this is where the audience was – and as such, digital PR took off. 

We can see how the growth of digital PR has evolved over time, so it’s not that traditional PR is necessarily less popular, I would rather say that digital PR has evolved to be even more popular than it was before.

Is Digital PR Or Traditional PR Right For My Business?

Choosing the right type of PR for your business plays an important role in getting the most out of your campaign and it’s important to ensure that you understand your target market and which type of PR might be most effective.

If you are looking to attract a traditional audience and grow offline brand awareness and visibility then traditional PR is a great option. By contrast, if you are looking to grow your business online then digital PR is a great choice. To find out more about digital PR and how it could work for you get in touch! 

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Cedarwood Nominated For Four PR Moment Awards

We’re delighted to announce that we have been nominated for four awards in the PR Moment Awards 2023 for our work across Digital PR.

Digital PR has been the biggest growth area of Cedarwood over the last 12 months so we are delighted to have our work recognised by the PR industry, in addition to the work we undertake for SEO!

We’ve been nominated in:

🎀 Best Digital PR Campaign Of The Year:

Cedarwood Digital & Little Loans – Driving Digital PR In A Competitive Vertical
Cedarwood Digital & Patient Claim Line – Building E-A-T Links
Cedarwood Digital & Hayes Garden World – Building Visibility Through Effective Digital PR

🎀 Low Budget Campaign Of The Year:

Cedarwood Digital & EZ Shopper – Driving Ecommerce Success Through PR & Referral Sales

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the ceremony next month 🍹

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A Guide To Newsjacking In 2023

Newsjacking has been a buzzword in the digital PR space for a while now and I often think of it as akin to E-A-T in the SEO space – it’s something that everyone knows about and if you get it right it can have a significant impact on your client’s results. Knowing where to start with newsjacking can be tricky especially if you’re doing it for the first time so let’s take a look at how we approach newsjacking and what we need to do to ensure that we get the best results for our clients and land those all-important placements. 

So What Is Newsjacking?

Chances are you are probably already familiar with the term newsjacking as it’s a pretty common term that gets used in day-to-day language but for those who aren’t familiar, the concept of newsjacking involves jumping on a trend or something that is topical in the news and adding to the conversation that might be through adding an expert comment or sending over some data that’s relevant to the conversation and can add value to a piece that a journalist might be currently covering.

The reason newsjacking is such an effective digital PR technique is that combines two of the most important elements that go into a great story, that is relevancy for the journalist – you’re jumping on something that’s happening right now, and also adding value to the conversation through data or expert opinion, you’re adding real value to a story that journalists already writing and that’s a surefire way to get coverage for your client.

Newsjacking comes in two formats, that’s proactive and reactive depending on when in the story you add your comment or expertise, both can be really effective from a link acquisition perspective and if you’re prepared, then chances are that it can be quite a quick turnaround project. So let’s take a look at how we can approach newsjacking to ensure that we get the best results for our clients and land some great placements and coverage across the board.

Preparation

Preparation is absolutely key when it comes to newsjacking as you want to be able to jump on a trend as quickly as you possibly can. This means putting some time in to gather images that they might want to use, look at areas of expertise and understanding who the best person to be the spokesperson is, and also any additional resources that they have available which you might be able to use to supplement their comments.

Stockpiling all of this information beforehand can help to make your newsjacking experience a lot smoother – we recommend having a sit down with your client to run through the newsjacking process and gather this information before you start your outreach – this will help you to improve your turnaround times and make sure that you’re able to jump on that emerging story as quickly as you possibly can.

News Listening

One of the most important elements of an effective newsjacking campaign is understanding what is topical and trending, finding topics that journalists are likely to cover – this means looking at what’s trending in the news and finding something that’s relevant to your client that you can add value to.

There are a number of different ways that you can conduct news listening but we’ve included some of the most popular options to get you started:

  1. Twitter

Twitter is a great place to start when you’re looking for new ideas and the trending hashtags are a great place to get your inspiration from. This can give you a good idea of topical issues that people are talking about, topics that are trending across the UK and also internationally, in addition to topics that people like to talk about and are maybe in the public interest.

Twitter has a “trending” section where you can understand what people are talking about – this can also be broken into areas such as “News”, “Sports” and also for your local area. Additionally, if you are looking to research into a specific area, you can research specific hashtag data to understand how many people are talking about a specific topic.

Source: twitter.com

Twitter is a great way to get a feel for what people are talking about – and also what is topical in the news – so it’s worth keeping this open throughout your day. Additionally, using hashtags like #journorequest and #prrequest can help you keep on top of what journalists are looking for – another great way to get an idea of relevant topics you might want to cover. 

2. TikTok

TikTok is another great way to find out what is topical and trending and you can trendjack really quickly with the user generated content – getting a great idea of topical stories that are in the public interest by also looking through engagement metrics.

If you have a TikTok Business account then you will also have access to some of great hashtag data and trends information that is available and you can find this across two main dashboards to help your news research – the first one is the general trending dashboard which goes through all of the trends from the last seven days:

Source: tiktok.com

You can also drill down into further detail around each of these specific hashtags to understand where they are trending and with which audiences (as well as their related interests which is great for helping you to build your media lists!). This information can give you great regional insights as well as tell you more about their age range and demographic information:

Source: tiktok.com

You can also just use TikTok generally to research data around a given topic by monitoring hashtag data and getting an idea of how people are approaching the topic / what they find of most interest. This is particularly valuable if you are looking to create content that targets Gen-Z who are usually avid TikTok users.

3. Google Alerts

Google Alerts provides a great way to stay on top of topics that are trending around your client and have them delivered straight to your inbox. By setting up notifications within Google Alerts it will email you every time there is news around a particular topic, your client name or something that is related to. This is a great way to stay on top of breaking issues that are topical to or related to the services or products that your clients sell. 

It’s relatively easy to set Google Alerts up, but we would recommend setting them up in a subfolder of your email inbox to avoid being inundated with alerts as they are coming in throughout the day. Set these up separately and spend some time running through them to see if they are relevant for your client, over time you’ll become accustomed to the types of news that this is pulling out and you can adjust your filtering to make this more relevant as you need to. This is a great way to jump on something that is topically relevant for your client without having to sift through an entire news site to find the information.

4. Upcoming Reports

Upcoming reports can be a great way to get ideas for newsjacking particularly if it’s proactive.  there are a wide range of industry bodies who published reports on a regular basis ranging from weekly through to daily, and jumping on these reports and putting your client into the centre of the conversation, is a great way to newsjack and really add that element of expertise and relevancy to the links you are building through to the website.

If you aren’t sure where to start with reports then try some popular industry bodies – places such as the NHS and the ONS are frequently reporting on a wide range of topics and you can easily find a way to link please through to your clients. In many situations these bodies will also have a calendar that you can access which showcases the types of reports that are coming up, this allows you to plan in advance so that you can support to ensure that you’re able to quickly jump on this trend once the report comes out.

Reports are really effective way to newsjack because they’re topical and they’re data-led – something which journalists love, so if you’re looking for ideas for your newsjacking then have a look at relevant industry bodies that are related to your client and the types of reports that they have coming up to see if there’s somewhere that you can add expert commentary and topical value.

5. Event Calendars

Event calendars are a great way to undertake proactive newsjacking and we often find that many publications publish their upcoming calendars for the year in advance,so this is a great way for us to prepare for upcoming events and to plan ahead some ideas for proactive newsjacking.

Keep up to date with your favourite publications and don’t be afraid to reach out to editors to ask them if they have a publication calendar in advance, this can help to give you an idea of the topics that they are looking to cover and the type of content that they might be more likely to include within their pieces.

As a result it is valuable to use this to guide your newsjacking because it already gives you an idea of what journalists think is relevant and what readers are likely to engage with, therefore making it more likely for your content to be picked up if it is relevant to this topic

6. Colleagues

Often in Digital PR we find ourselves the victims of trying to come up with all of the ideas  ourselves and it’s hard for everyone to always be on top of what’s in the news and what is a trending topic – so why not use your colleagues?  We set up a group chat where we encourage our colleagues to post something that they’ve read that is newsworthy or trending – that could have been something that they’ve read in the newspaper that morning or something they’ve seen on TikTok or read on Twitter. 

By encouraging our colleagues to contribute in this way we are getting a much bigger pool of information that we can use to take ideas from and chances are that many of us are reading different publications or fall into different TikTok algorithms, so this can be a great way to get a wide range of newsjacking options.

Research

Once you have undertaken your news listening it’s important to thoroughly research an idea before you start as you want to make sure that the idea hasn’t been done before and that someone else isn’t currently working on it. You also need to ensure that any information you are  bringing to the table is offering a new opinion or something that hasn’t been published before, after all, that’s what journalists are looking for – a new angle on an existing story.

The research is important to ensure that you’re bringing something fresh to the story – so how do we go about undertaking research to understand topics and areas that journalists have covered before? Here are a couple of ideas for tools that can help you:

  1. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great way to get an understanding of topics that are covered recently or topics that are popular with the press. You can use this tool to understand the types of content that journalists have covered recently, which journalists have covered which types of content and also in what volume so you can really start to understand how many people are covering a particular topic and therefore a) has it been done before and b) is it likely to be picked up by a particular journalist.

One of the other important metrics that was talking give you if social shares and while this isn’t a direct impact on SEO performance, what it can help to show you is how engaged a particular article is and therefore potentially how many people are likely to read that article and how much it is in the public interest – this is a valuable analysis before you start investing your time into creating content around that topic.

Using tools like Buzzsumo allows you to understand how well your content is likely to land as well as to ensure that hasn’t been covered before and therefore that you’re not wasting your time.

  1. Google News Search

Google News search is another great way to understand how content is landing and this can give you an idea again of topics that have been covered before, the types of journalists that are likely to cover your content and also any angles that you could potentially pursue that haven’t already been done.

We often use Google News to understand what is topically trending when we pitch to new digital PR clients – that helps to give us a overview of the market and understand what types of stories have been covered in recent times, but as a client you can also use this to understand if a topic has been done to death, even a bit or if there is opportunity to add a new angle into a pre-existing trending topic. 

  1. Use External Tools

In addition to Google alerts and external tools that you can also use to help with your research. One example of this is semrush and you can use this tool to understand topics which are trending and also at the types of search volumes around specific keywords or topics that you might be looking to cover. 

You can also use tools like the Topic Research tool to understand popular trending topics and how they are evolving over time. This allows you to type in a particular keyword/topic and evaluate topics around this that are currently being covered/talked about – this is another great way to check that your topic hasn’t already been covered, or to help analyse a new angle or approach.

Source: SEMRush

Research is key to ensure that you don’t waste your time undertaking a campaign which has already been done and that you are able to bring a fresh angle and approach to the story. 

Ideation & Creation

The ideation and creation stage plays an important role in any newsjacking campaign and this is where you pull everything together. So you take the information you found within your research, you take anything that’s topical and trending and relevant to your client and you can bind it all together to create a great story, piece of data or angle that delivers great coverage for your client and also insightful information to a trending topic.

The ideation stage has a number of different parts to it and this includes:

  1. Brainstorming

Brainstorming is when you put your heads together and come up with some great ideas as to how you can get your client coverage in a story. Brainstorming can take a number of different formats but it’s a great idea to get the whole team together. If the client has time this is also a great opportunity to get them involved so that they can lend their expertise and showcase this. 

Try and come up with a number of different ideas and angles and run them past your client to see what they are comfortable with and which best showcases their expertise and their data. Once you have a couple of ideas, start to narrow them down until you’ve selected the options that you want to go for.

  1. Identifying Your Angle

An idea is nothing without an angle that adds value to the article or the story – this is often more important than anything else, you need to bring something fresh to the article, so identifying your angle and making this clear early on is important to getting coverage. 

Look at what has already been done and hone in on the value that your data or expertise can add – do you have something new to bring to the conversation? Do you have data that showcases an additional angle on a regional/international level? Identifying your angle plays a key role in ensuring that journalists feel that your content adds value to their article. 

  1. Tapping In On Expertise

Make sure to tap into the expertise of your clients if possible, this will of course give you a great angle when you’re approaching a story and will help you to identify how you can add value very quickly. 

Feel free to sit down with your clients to really understand the areas of expertise or to conduct an interview with the spokesperson to understand the types of angles that you could look for, tapping in on the expertise will really help you to showcase this through the content that you’re creating and also to add real value to the article.

  1. Creating The Right Content

Creating the right type of contact is also really important whether this comes in quote format, whether it’s a piece of data or whether it’s simply a couple of lines having a new angle to an existing story.

Having a look at the types of content that journalists are covering and the format this is in will help you to identify how to best approach the content that you want to create, to ensure it’s the right type of content that the journalist would like to cover. Having the right content and the right angle will help to get your content placed and is an important part of the newsjacking process.

  1. Creating The Right Format

Creating the right format for your content is also very important, this means how you display the content and the type of content that you’re sending to journalists.Make sure to include any assets that will help support the story this could be high resolution images or associated data tables and always remember to clearly state your methodology for any data analysis pieces that you’re doing this is important to ensure that the journalist is comfortable to cover your content and also that you explain where you’ve got the data from and at what time. 

Outreach

Once you have the idea and you’ve pulled it together into a press release with the supporting information now comes one of the most important parts – the outreach. Using the right tagline, contacting the right journalists and creating a killer press release are all important parts of this process and to ensure that you get your coverage landed we’d recommend the following steps:

  1. Research Your Journalists

Researching your journalists is super important to ensuring that you are sending your content to people who are likely to cover it and who have a genuine reason to cover it/interest in the topic. There’s a number of different ways that you can research journalists and these include:

  • Using tools like Buzzsumo to understand which journalists are covering similar content or similar topical areas
  • Researching on Twitter – most journalists announce moves on Twitter, make a note of these and start to follow these journalists – they will often do a shoutout if they are looking for a specific type of content to cover
  • Manual research through Google News – looking through Google News and other web indexes to understand journalists who have covered the topic recently and any articles where you could reach out and add a new angle
  • Look at specific topic journalists i.e. journalists who cover soaps, finance, travel etc… add these to your list for the topical coverage

By researching journalists in advance you are more likely to build a list of journalists who are more engaged with your content, therefore leading to better overall results and avoiding sending unrelated content to journalists who may find this annoying. 

  1. Build An Effective Media List

An effective media list plays a key role in ensuring that you’re giving your content the best chance of getting covered, so taking time to build your media list is time well spent. When pulling the list together, call on your journalist research to understand which journalists you want to include on your list, you can then follow this up by using a journalist database tool (we use Vuelio) to source relevant emails and start to build out your list. Remember that relevancy here is key so you need just enough journalists to ensure you get a good reach, while at the same time you don’t want to flood journalists who aren’t interested in your content.

  1. Monitor Opens & Trends

Data plays an important role in an effective newsjacking campaign so make sure that you monitor your opens and trends to understand how journalists are engaging with your content.
Using tools which allow you to track open rate will help you to understand how journalists are engaging with your content, over time this will help you to understand which journalists engage with which type of content and will naturally make your content more effective – using data in this way can help you to streamline your outreach is very effective.

  1. Follow Up

It’s important to follow up your content and press releases – don’t just do one push, always follow up with a couple of different pushes at different times. It might be that you caught a journalist when they were particularly busy, or that they already have a full news roster for the day, by doing follow ups you can ensure that you’re continuing to push your story out and you may find that in many instances it lands on the second or third push.

It’s also valuable to follow up when something particularly relevant has landed in the press – send your press release along with some updated comments or information on something which is trending topically, this can be a great way to get it included in a news round up or timely news story.

  1. Rework Content Where Needed

Don’t be afraid to rework your content where you need to. You might find that you actually need it in a different format, that it’s a little outdated or that you need to use a new angle. You always have the opportunity to update your content, so don’t be afraid to launch it at different times of the year with new, up to date information, or a slightly more relevant/different angle – reworking content can often be a great way to land content which perhaps didn’t place the first time round. 

Review

Once we’ve completed the outreach process, it doesn’t end there and the review stage is perhaps one of the most important stages – this is where we analyse what went well, what type of content was covered and how we could leverage this for future campaigns. Key areas that we review and look into include:

  1. Open Rate

Open rate plays a key role in our reviews as it gives us a great idea of how journalists have engaged with our content – who has engaged with it and at what rate. Over time this becomes a very valuable metric and one that we can use to understand which journalists are likely to engage with which content, to better inform our outreach process

  1. Publications Covered

Reviewing which publications have covered our content also plays an important role in informing our outreach strategy moving forwards. It’s important to review who has covered what type of content and when, which journalist has covered the content and how it has been covered – these are all vital pieces of data to understand how we can best tailor our newsjacking efforts to the right publications.

  1. Journalist Feedback

This is also a good time to review any feedback that you’ve received from journalists, this could include journalists asking you to remove them from your mailing list, or alternatively journalists who have fed back on what they liked about an article, or what could have been improved/what they needed to support the article. All of this information is super valuable and should be noted to improve the outreach process moving forwards.

Conclusion

Newsjacking isn’t just a buzzword, it’s an important facet of any effective Digital PR campaign and it’s a great way to get your clients at the forefront of the conversation, quickly. To find out more about how newsjacking works, check out our Digital PR services or case studies