Online PR - newspaper

How To Get Media Coverage For Your Business In Seven Steps

by Digital PR & Outreach tipsLink Building

As a small or start up-business, gaining media attention  is important for growth and gives your SEO a significant boost. But, it can often feel like a daunting, nay impossible task. Where do you even begin? And do you need a big budget to make a difference?

At Cedarwood Digital, we work with clients of all shapes and sizes, with a variety of budgets. So, we know first-hand that you can make an impact, regardless of size or budget.

We’ve rounded up our top tips and broken down the process of  landing coverage for your business, so you can start a media storm. 

 

1. Understand what journalists want to see

When creating a press release, keep in mind that journalists receive countless similar emails each  day. Focus on providing something valuable that they can’t get elsewhere! Create fresh content that either supports established ideas with research or challenges them with new data. Surveys that provide journalists with interesting and topical statistics are a great way to get your business featured in the press. Whilst there are companies that will run surveys for you, these can be costly, so SMEs can benefit from using their own customer databases to conduct surveys and research.

Images are also crucial for a strong press release, as we live in an increasingly visual world. Including a few good  images to support your press release saves journalists time and could be the difference between your story getting picked up and falling flat.

 

2. Know your target audience

Craft a unique angle that makes your story resonate with the publications you’re looking to target. Try not to generalise content and send it across all genres of media – this will be obvious  to the journalist and appear lazy. It’s best to brainstorm and research topical news, upcoming events and  media trends relevant to your brand to ensure your content hits the right mark. Don’t neglect regional press, as a local angle can also be a great hook. Though regional publications may have a smaller audience than nationals, they offer the chance to showcase news on a local scale and can be easier to land  features in than the bigger publications. If you’re offering research and statistics that cover the whole of the UK, try breaking your research down into key city demographics so that it is more relevant to regional publications. 

 

3. Build a comprehensive media list 

Whilst you may already be familiar with some key publications you would like to target, it’s useful to go beyond the obvious and expand your horizons to more niche publications as well.  It’s a good idea to think about your ideal customer, and then pinpoint the media outlets they would be using for their news. There are numerous online tools  to help you build out  a thorough media list – with everything from trade journals to nationals. Tools like Roxhill Media, Muckrack, and Cision offer subscriptions, allowing you access to media databases. Or for those with smaller budgets, websites like Hunter.io allow a limited number of free searches for journalist contacts. Both X (Twitter) and LinkedIn can also be good places to start building connections. Monitor #journorequest and #prrequest on X (Twitter) to find relevant feature opportunities and connect with journalists on LinkedIn.

We recommend keeping your media list nice and organised. Categorise the publications by type, size, and geographic reach to make your life easier when you get to the outreach stage.

 

4. Research the targeted journalist

Once you’ve built your media  list, double check that the journalist specialises in your topic. Ensure you’ve got accurate contact details noted as first impressions count and you don’t want to come across as unprofessional!  

Make sure to stay on top of deadlines and publication dates to ensure timely outreach and avoid interrupting journalists when they’re working against the clock. There’s no problem in getting in touch to ask if a certain topic is of interest, but don’t harass them. If you’ve followed up twice via email and have still not had a response, then unfortunately the journalist may just not be interested in your pitch.

 

5. Design your press release to make an impression

Structure press releases in a way that makes them easily digestible to busy journalists. Generally, try to stick to the following rules:

  • ➡️Use a snappy and attention-grabbing headline; assume the journalist is in a rush and reading it on their phone, it needs to grab them! 
  • ➡️It can be useful to think about your press release as an inverted pyramid. Immediately summarise the gist  of the content in the first paragraph, making sure to answer the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why). Then, bring in your additional context below with the information becoming less vital as you move down the page. 
  • ➡️Avoid technical terms which aren’t accessible.
  • ➡️Support your story with evidence or data where possible. In particular, including a shocking statistic in the headline is a good technique to get your release noticed and show journalists that it’s news.
  • ➡️Include your contact information at the end of the press release, and make sure to be available for follow up calls.
  • ➡️A ‘Notes to the Editor’ section at the bottom of the release is always useful. This is where you can include relevant background information that does not feature in your press release, such as an overview of your business’ services, how you conducted your research  or a brief history of your business.
  •  ➡️Then you’re ready to press send!

 

6. Add supporting information & special extras to the press release

To give your press release a bit more zest, it’s worth considering what extra support you could provide to each journalist. Publications often want to get unique angles on stories to avoid duplicated articles, so think about offering a case study, interview or photograph to sweeten the deal.

If you have a larger publication in mind that you are eager to work with, then you could offer them the exclusive on the story first; being featured in one large publication with a significant audience could be more worthwhile than coverage in  multiple smaller publications.

 

7. Build relationships with journalists

To establish long-term media relationships, provide journalists with a steady stream of good content, stick to deadlines, and be readily available for interviews and commentary.  This way, you’ll create a great reputation for yourself as a useful contact and build a lasting relationship with the press. 

 

Land media coverage with the help of professionals


With these tips under your belt, you should now be in the best position to get out there and secure coverage for your business. Need a hand getting started? Our digital PR team here at Cedarwood Digital have a proven track record. We deliver campaigns that land you 100% earned links and coverage from top publications because we know what the journalists want to see, and how to execute it.

We’ve achieved excellent results for both SMEs and large international clients alike. Get in touch today to get your brand in front of its target audience.

5 simple lead generation ideas

5 simple lead generation ideas

by Digital PR & Outreach tips
At Cedarwood Digital, we tend to generate most leads for our clients through Google Ads and custom lead capture landing pages. However, there are many other simple ways that we have utilised to successfully generate leads: here are our top 5 recommendations.

Create engaging content

Relevant and engaging content in this digital age remains the best way to get someone’s attention and bring them to your website. What makes content engaging, you may ask? Check out tools like buzzsumo.com or ahrefs.com which show the most shared pieces of content in your field that have gone viral, and get some inspiration from there.  The golden rule for any piece of content, according to entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, is to give value to the reader. Forget about trying to sell your stuff. Put out great content and expect nothing in return. By providing valuable content you establish readers trust in your expertise. This lays a foundation that can lead to a conversation about your product or services. Don’t hesitate to give a lot of value: research shows that posts with 2,400 words get shared the most.

Create “how to” videos

Youtube is the fastest growing online platform by engagement rate, and online video viewership surpassed TV viewership in 2017. More and more people are looking for the right videos to solve their problems. Search queries containing “how to” are growing 33% annually. This creates an ample opportunity to create video content, ranging from how to create pivot tables in Excel, to how to paint your ceiling. You should really think about what expertise you have that could solve a problem for your customers. Again, this is giving unconditional value to build your credibility. As a result of watching your video, a prospect could visit your site and get in touch with you.

Use customer reviews

If you are providing an online platform, no matter how big or small, make sure that you sign up to online review platforms like TrustRadius.com or G2Crowd.com. These reviews will massively boost the visibility and authority of your products and services. Review sites such as these usually have a high rank for many software comparison searches. Backlinks from these sites are also very valuable in terms of SEO. References and referrals are one of the key aspects that influence buying decisions between two similar products. If you ask your happiest clients to contribute to these platforms it will go a long way in terms of building credibility, and prominence of reviews on these platforms has the potential to bring you inbound leads.

Add a quiz or estimate calculator to your website

If you get users to your website, it would then be of value to have an interactive tool available. There you could ask them a few questions and dependent on the subject area, provide them with an answer which will be of interest or value to them. This is a great way to capture prospect emails and generate engagement, literally. Another example is the lead capture form on Airsorted, a service for Airbnb hosts. On their website, users need to enter their postcode and number of bedrooms to get an estimate of much money their property could earn on Airbnb, whilst providing useful information for the business.   

Host a webinar

Finally, online webinars are a quick and easy way to communicate with prospects, customers and employees.  Pick a topic that is relevant to your industry and find the best expert within your company or among your clients. Set a specific date and time, and create an event landing page with a simple lead capture form. Promote the webinar everywhere you can – Linkedin Ads are great for this because you can place them in front of the most relevant audiences. As you get signups, remember to send reminders both before and after the event. Furthermore, it gives your sales team a reason to get in touch with those prospects and engage in conversation. Find more lead generation advice over on our blog.
Why Are Links Important For SEO

Why are links important for SEO, and how can I get them?

by Digital PR & Outreach tipshome pageLink BuildingSEO

If you’re in the digital marketing world, you’ve undoubtedly heard that getting backlinks from other websites is crucial for SEO. It’s important to utilise anything that can help to boost your website’s search ranking, so we’ll shed some light on why links are so important and teach you how to build them yourself.

Why are links important for SEO?

Building backlinks to your website (getting other websites to link back to yours) sends out a trust signal to Google that your website has good authority, and therefore should be ranked higher. However, this depends on the type and quality of the website that posts the link. Essentially, if a quality website which Google trusts links back to your site, Google determines that you too are a quality website, so should be ranked higher. You can work out the quality of a website by checking its domain rating on websites such as Ahrefs or Moz: the higher score the better.

However, Google can also penalise for backlinks which it sees as unnatural. For example, spamming forums, creating tonnes of directory listings, paying bloggers on fiver to link to your website are unnatural ways to build links, which in turn will lower your position on Google. It is far better for SEO to secure a few strong links a month than to build hundreds of low-quality backlinks in a short space of time.

Hence, you should always ensure that links have a natural connection to your business, which you can achieve with the following techniques.

Brand reclamation

 

It’s always great exposure when a publisher features your brand in their article, though sometimes they will mention a brand without linking back to the brand’s website. Whilst this can be frustrating, it’s easy to maximise this opportunity and secure a link from a high-quality website. Most of the hard work has already been done because a journalist has already noticed and written about your brand. Simply drop them an email thanking them for featuring your business and request a link to your website be added to the page in case their readers want to find out more.

Tracking brand mentions online is very easy to set up so that you don’t miss these opportunities. There are several web-monitoring tools that help you do this, such as Google Alerts (free), Ahrefs alerts and Gorkana. Some publications may have editorial policies not to include external links, but it’s always best to email and check.

Media tools

 

Now that GDPR is in place, media databases with opted-in contact details of journalists are more important than ever for sourcing good quality PR opportunities and contacts. There are a variety of tools you can pay for, as well as free databases that scrape public email addresses from across the web.

One relatively cost-effective way to find feature opportunities is through journalist alerts. These are email alerts that journalists send out to source contacts or information for the features that they are writing. You can then respond to queries that are relevant to your brand, offering information, images, product reviews or quotes. Not only do these tools allow you to effectively build links in a natural way, but they also allow you to develop relationships with key journalists in your market without the need of a pricey media database. Building your own database of journalists that you have successfully worked with makes it easier to work with them again in the future, as you can either contact them with valuable content or they may contact you with relevant upcoming features to you.

Local links

 

Big-budget content campaigns can bring in a lot of high quality links, but exploring your local link opportunities can also be a good cost-effective way to build links on a smaller scale. Investigate whether you have any current connections that you could source a link from. Is your Managing Director an alumni of a prestigious university? If so, perhaps they could make a donation or share their business expertise on their website. Is there a local charity you could work with? Or a local group linked to your industry? Explore current connections that your staff and management have to see if there are any natural links that could be secured by sending an email.

Competitor analysis

 

If a key competitor outranks you for several of your keywords, performing an analysis of where their links are coming from is a great way to see what kind of outreach work they are undertaking. Tools such as Ahrefs enable you to identify which publications your competitors are receiving links from, as well as spark ideas for potential outreach content.

Are there any high quality review websites that your competitor has a link on? If they do and your brand doesn’t, then this can be an area to explore. Do they have any links from high quality bloggers? Again, if they do then you can contact the blogger who wrote the article to introduce your brand and highlight what you can offer them, should they be planning any articles which you could contribute to.


10 Outreach Tips From Brighton SEO 2018

10 Outreach tips from Brighton SEO 2018

by Link Building
On 28th September, the Cedarwood Digital team travelled south to attend Brighton SEO, a huge one-day search marketing conference. Here are 10 outreach tips that we picked up during the day:

Broken backlinks

Whilst many companies are familiar with fixing backlinks to their own websites, now is the time to start taking advantage of competitors’ backlinks. Screaming Frog, a website crawling tool, allows companies to find any inbound links to a competitors website that result in a 404 error. Once these have been identified, outreach teams can contact the journalist who published the article to suggest that they link to their company’s website instead. If the article contains content that the company’s website doesn’t currently have, then create this content first and then pitch it to the journalist alongside a link to the content. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Reverse image search

This may be an old technique, but it is still useful for identifying new link opportunities. Find a graphic or image that a competitor had featured in national publications and then use this in a Google image search. This will show the websites that covered that graphic and the context that it was used in. Then work on creating a graphic with updated information on it and contact the publications to see if they would be interested in your material. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Hashtags

Take a competitors URLs and paste it into a link tool such as AHREFS or Majestic and then identify their new backlinks. If there any hashtags in the articles they have recently received links from then make a note of these and simply Google these hashtags. This is a great way to find out which bloggers have worked with a competitor which gives an indication of the articles that they publish. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Backlink analysis

A backlink analysis is a great way to understand where a competitor has been recently securing links – for example, using the SEM Rush gap analysis tool. This will not only show the domains that are linking to your competitor, but also exactly where the link is and its context. It is likely that your competitor has a large number of backlinks in their profile so it is recommended to compile a list of around 15 top opportunities to start with and then build this list up in stages. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

Set up alerts

Set up Google or Ahrefs alerts for your business and then set up alerts for your competitors. This will tell you when your competitors are being mentioned online, meaning that you can see if they are receiving links from high authority websites. Laura Hogan – Use Your Competitors For Freeeeee Links 

News & media jumping

This is a technique that is used on Twitter by those who work in PR and it involves using a set of hashtags to request specific information. These hashtags are #PRRequest and #JournoRequest and journalists often use these when they are are trying to find someone to comment or interview for a story or feature. Sign up for email alerts so that you don’t miss out on a potential opportunity. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Trade & industry publications

Industry-specific publications are always on the lookout for relevant content so use them as part of your outreach strategy. If you have any content that you would like to share that would be useful to others in your industry, then pitch this to relevant journalists. It is likely that the publication operates in print as well as online then this could also lead to some fantastic exposure for your business. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Secure links before you produce the content

Time is very important and every second of an outreach campaign counts, so try to secure a link before you have produced the content. If you have an idea for a piece of content or infographic, check first that this is of interest to your target publications. You can find out by pitching your idea to journalists and writers to get their feedback. If you are able to compile a small list of publications that would be willing to use your content with a guaranteed link then you can go ahead and make the content. Stacy MacNaught – Securing Links Before You’ve Even Produced Your Content

Surveys

If you want to create content or a press release on a certain topic that requires the public opinion, then try surveys. Google Surveys allow users to gather information in a short space of time, whilst Survey Monkey allows you to collect a large pool of data. Analyse this data, collate your findings and write them up into an interesting piece of content. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business

Data outreach

If you have a content idea that requires data and statistics from reputable sources, then try government bodies. The  Office For National Statistics (ONS) and Freedom Of Information Requests are great for getting reputable data from government departments, such as the police force or the department for education. There are already requests available that other users have submitted but you can submit your own. Charlie Marchant – Ways To Definitely Get Links For Your Business So if you work as part of an outreach team and have been struggling for campaign ideas, then try some of these outreach tips to ramp up your link-building strategy. READ NEXT: Why are links important for SEO?