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7 reasons to use digital PR

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As Google and other search engines get smarter, your marketing strategy needs to as well. Getting your content in front of the right audiences is now more difficult than ever with the saturation of web content and the growing number of businesses who have wised-up to SEO best practices.

Luckily, digital PR can help you cut through the clutter. This guest post from Ad-Rank explains how to get the most out of digital PR.

Why you need digital PR in your plan
With over 51% of people consuming their news online via social media, if you haven’t yet implemented digital PR, it’s time to start making it an essential ingredient of your marketing campaigns. Below are just some of the reasons why:

1. Digital PR is measurable

Unlike traditional PR, where readership and television viewers are based on average readers per month and potential audience, digital PR campaigns result in precise measurements.

Where it used to be difficult, today it’s a lot easier to gauge the number of viewers who actually saw a feature or engaged with it. Digital PR campaigns allow you to track everything – from who saw your content to which device they viewed it from. You can see exactly what demographic group your readers fit into and what time of day is more effective, even which links on the page got you the most interaction.

2. Build easily accessible network

Email, online communities and platforms such as Vuelio have replaced what used to be a file of business cards, making outreach and responses easy to measure. While similar to the relationships built via traditional PR campaigns, the beauty of digital relationships lies in the online interactions that can keep your content relevant.

For instance, when a news outlet publishes your online press release on their website, you can tweet a thanks to the writer on Twitter, or send an email thanking them for coverage. This strengthens your relationship and gives you a go-to for your next article.

3. Wider reach

Social media marketers have always understood the value of a share on Facebook or a retweet on Twitter, and a good digital PR campaign needs to exploit this powerful influence as well. When an interesting press release or campaign reaches users on social media, the reach of that campaign can spread like wildfire and get in front of an audience you would never reach simply using traditional mediums.

4. Fuel SEO with backlinks

A key component of digital PR is the value it brings to your business’ SEO goals. When you create an interesting campaign, bloggers and online journalists pick it up, post it on their sites and create powerful links back to the source – you.

Google has long touted the importance of a good link profile, and digital PR directly supports the building of high quality external sources linking to your website as your content is shared and cited on their sites.

5. Build brand awareness

Two aspects of digital PR – wider reach and SEO boosting – combine to also enhance brand awareness. As your campaign is shared and viewed, more and more people learn about your brand’s products or services. The value is two-fold, because as they learn about your brand, they may also research your offerings, giving you visibility in Google and helping you rank higher in search results.

6. Create bespoke content for your audience

Personalisation and customisation are essential to reaching today’s audiences, and with a digital PR campaign, you can do just that. The trick is to restructure your content based on the needs and demographics of the users who will view it from a specific source.

For instance, you can write a formal press release for use in online news publications, but create a fun infographic of the same information to share on Twitter and a sleek video to post on Facebook.

7. Maximise investment in content

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, digital PR helps you maximise your budget. Paid advertising on social media and Google are cheaper to implement and have higher potential reach than a print or television version of the same content.

Plus, the beauty of digital PR is that online content can be used in many mediums, and once created, the cost of sharing it is virtually nothing after it gains traction.

Adding digital PR to your repertoire
Effective digital PR begins with a strong strategy. With the right plan, and people ready to implement your new tactics, you can relish in your newfound digital successes and increase your online presence.

 

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Media Spotlight: Alfred Joyner, International Business Times & Newsweek

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Alfred Joyner is the head of video at IBT Media, a fast growing global digital news organisation and parent company of the International Business Times & Newsweek. In this spotlight interview, Alfred explains how IBT Media has harnessed the power of online journalism, why Facebook is the perfect place to broadcast live videos, producing live content that is engaging, and why IBT Media are focused on growing their social presence this year.  

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Could you introduce yourself and speak a little about your professional background? I’m the head of video at IBT Media, overseeing two of the organisation’s brands, International Business Times UK and Newsweek International. I’ve been at the company now for over four years, previously working freelance for Bloomberg, October Films and the History Channel.

What do you most like about being the head of video at IBT Media? And what are the challenges? Running the video team at IBT Media is a fantastic experience as the organisation is very switched-on digitally and multimedia-focused, meaning that they understand the importance of video to a modern newsroom operation and are enthusiastic to both support my efforts and allow the team to innovate in order to stand out from the crowd.

Whilst it is fantastic to be producing video across the company, I do have to wear two hats as it were in order to make great video for both IBTimes UK and Newsweek, meaning that I have to be aware of the differences in the brands when producing video.

What sets IBT Media apart from its competitors? 

Unlike other legacy brands, IBT Media is a digital-first institution that from the beginning has harnessed the power of the web for it’s journalism.

As a young and hungry newsroom, working for IBT can feel more akin to a blossoming tech startup than a traditional media organisation, and this inventiveness and drive can be seen in the quality work that we have produced.

Why did IBT decide to start using Facebook Live? IBT had been looking for a means to enter the live-streaming field, and the launch of Facebook Live seemed the perfect opportunity to dip our toes in the water.

Facebook has our biggest social audience, and so we knew it would be a great place to begin broadcasting live videos.

The fact that Facebook was actively ranking live videos higher on their system as well incentivised us to try the platform out.

Why do you think it is important for businesses to train their staff in relation to knowing how to use Facebook Live? It’s important to train staff on how to use Facebook Live as whilst it is incredibly easy to broadcast live on the platform, it is rather more complex if you want your broadcast to be successful.

You are effectively asking the reporters who are fronting your FB Live videos to act as news presenters, so they need to be trained up as such.

You also have to keep in mind that this is the image of your brand being put out to the public, so whoever is presenting to camera needs to be engaging, knowledgeable and adaptable.

What kind of qualities make a good Facebook Live news story? 

I think there are three qualities that make a great Facebook Live news story: immediacy, unpredictability and emotion.

The immediacy of being live on the ground, whether at a protest or event, helps makes the audience member feel as if they were actually there. The unpredictable nature of a live video keeps the viewer interested, as they’re not sure what exactly is going to happen next. Is a protest going to escalate? Is that person going to react positively or negatively to whatever they are doing on camera? Finally, emotive videos are great as they spark an emotional response in the viewer.

They are more likely to share a video if it made them laugh, made them cry; made them happy or made them sad.

For businesses who want to use Facebook Live, what is the best way to keep their audiences engaged with this type of live content? 

Engaging personalities make for the most engaging Facebook Live videos, so having a good presenter is key to keeping audiences interested.

Making sure the video looks professional is also key. A FB Live doesn’t need to be as slick and polished as TV news, but the visuals, sound and connection all need to be good enough to make sure the live video is worth continuing to watch.

One of your reporters did a lot of coverage on Brexit last year on Facebook Live. What is the biggest difference in how people engage with your live content versus reading one of your articles? Someone reading our articles is looking for an intelligent lowdown on a news event, with up to date facts coupled with incisive analysis.

A live video is much more about providing an emotion. The viewer is looking for an experience of what the live event is like, as well as wanting to know information about the event being covered.

In the case of our Brexit coverage, whilst our articles tended to focus on providing information on the referendum and subsequent plans for leaving the EU, our live videos focused on how people were reacting to the decision. This was illustrated by us reporting live outside the Supreme Court on multiple occasions, where we captured the differing attitudes between the remain and leave campaigners on the legal process.

IBT Times_FacebookLive

What trends do you think we will see this year in regards to live video and how businesses will be using them? Live video will continue to grow in usage across newsrooms, and so will the professionalism and quality of the live videos. Already, some organisations have effectively made the transition to live TV news broadcasts, employing multiple cameras and overlay graphics in their productions.

Whilst Facebook has captured most attention, the fact that other social media platforms like Instagram have recently entered the field  shows that these companies still feel there’s room for competing platforms in the live market. I wouldn’t be surprised if the likes of YouTube and Periscope staged a fightback this year and tried to attract more businesses to use their live services.

What kind equipment should businesses invest in to create live content? At the very minimum you need a good quality smartphone, but you should not stop there if you want to create a decent live video. Whilst hooking up cameras for live video can be a costly process, a cheaper alternative is to purchase a camera dedicated to live-streaming. We have used a Mevo camera for our studio broadcasts, which cost us around £240. The camera shoots in 4K, and syncs with your phone so that you can choose which parts of the image to focus your FB Live on, effectively created a multi-camera setup.

Sound is the most important piece of tech to invest in when producing live videos, so I would purchase a good quality microphone that works with the smartphone you are using to broadcast live. Finally, you want a strong connection throughout your broadcast to avoid any interruptions, so look to buy a Wi-Fi hotspot, or ‘Mi-Fi’ to improve signal.

At a recent conference, you said that you can repackage and repurpose Facebook Live content. Can you explain how this can be done? Whenever you broadcast live on Facebook you always have the option to save your content once the broadcast ends. We then hand over the footage to a member of our video team who edits the live video down into a digestible 90-120 second news package.

This is simple enough when covering a major event such as a speech or protest, but sometimes it can be a little harder to edit a FB Live Video down. This is where you have to be a bit more inventive about how you repurpose a video for your site.

For example we produced a FB Live video at the London Toy Fair in January where our presenter got to try out the most popular toys on sale this year. One part of the live-stream involved the presenter asking a retail expert about the toy industry, and it was one answer she had on how the toy industry had been affected by Brexit that we repurposed as a news video package for our site. This ended up being one of the most popular business videos we produced that day, showing how you can make one FB Live video work for one audience, that repurpose it to make it suit a completely different audience.

IBT Media are known for being innovative in digital media and social publishing technologies, what’s next for IBT Media? We’ve got plenty of exciting plans afoot at IBT Media as we look to grow our operations across our brands both here in the UK and abroad. We recently established our trends and features desk at IBTimes UK as a means of providing a bridge between the news and social teams, focusing on the stories that are being talked about most online, and providing an analysis of trending issues in an intelligent, incisive manner.

Growing our social presence will be one of the key developments across the newsroom this year.

Will you be working on any exciting projects this year? We have a number of exciting video projects lined up this year. I can’t speak about them in too much detail yet, but they will involve even greater collaboration across the newsroom to present a true multimedia experience, and will see us innovate with new technologies, particularly 360 video. Watch this space!

Boom Time For Newspapers – Yes, Really

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Yes, that’s right – we’re starting the New Year on a positive note. The newspaper industry (or at least certain sections of the newspaper industry) are in rude health and are looking forward to real growth in terms of readership, advertising revenues and profits in 2017.

Leading the charge into this exciting era in newspaper publishing is The Washington Post which has recently announced it will be adding 60 newsroom staff to its editorial team in the near future.

According to media reports, The Washington Post will add a “rapid-response” investigative team, expand its video journalism and breaking news team and make additional investments in areas such as podcasts and photography.

The Washington Post’s renewed success is largely attributed to its new owner, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who reportedly invested $50 million dollars into the company.

As you might expect from an organisation owned by one of the leading lights of the digital economy much of this success stems from online activity.

In a memo released to staff , The Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan said: “The Washington Post shattered all traffic records over the past year, passing traditional competitors and the largest digital sites. With monthly unique visitors pushing 100 million in the U.S. alone and 30 million more from around the world, our traffic has increased by nearly 50% in the past year, extending the reach of Washington Post journalism to a broader national and global audience.

On the subscription front, we’ve more than doubled digital subscription revenue in the past 12 months with a 75% increase in new subscribers since January.

Our Sales team has been very effective in monetizing this surge in audience, with special franchises, new products and innovations in the speed and quality of our ads. As a result, digital advertising revenue has increased by more than 40% over last year’s record performance.”

Ryan heaped praise on Bezos by saying: “Jeff has encouraged us to seek out “positive surprises” and to experiment in multiple ways. Today, we are witnessing progress as many of those experiments are yielding strong results.”

UK publishers will almost certainly be keeping a close eye on the success of The Washington Post, here’s hoping the Bezos effect rubs off on them and we see some equally “positive surprises” in the coming months.

Hyperlocal News Publishers Join Forces

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Cardiff University’s Centre from Community Journalism has set up a new organisation to represent the 500+ hyperlocal news publishers across the UK to bid for a share of state support.

The organisation hopes to help small and micro-publishers work with organisations like the BBC, who help fund 150 journalists to cover local councils, and also attract a share of advertising revenues from statutory notices placed in regional newspapers by local government.

The move has been welcomed by proprietors of a number of hyperlocal news services.

Graham Breeze, co-founder of the news sites MyWelshpool and MyNewtown in Wales, told journalists: “We floated the idea of establishing a national body back in 2013 when we were chosen by Nesta, the UK Innovation Foundation, to be part of its Destination Local programme.

“While there was a great deal of support for our proposals the timing was probably not right. But the timing is perfect today with hyperlocal news sites popping up all over the country, changing the local media landscape and offering new opportunities.”

Breeze continued: “We have to lobby Government, along with county and town councils, for greater recognition of the hyperlocal sector. We will never be able to attract their revenues as individuals but together as a national body we will be able to convince procurement departments that there is another alternative to print.

“The hyperlocal industry would change overnight if only a small amount of Government and Council spend on public notices came our way. Forming a national body would ensure we can demand fair treatment.

“A hyperlocal news industry is not the future. It is here now, springing up in every corner of the UK with viewing and readership figures spiralling upwards while newspaper sales continue to crash downwards.”

While many hyperlocal news sites will undoubtedly cherish their independence, particularly as many have sprung up from the ashes of local titles abandoned by large publishing houses, this level of national co-operation is a positive step forward in securing the future of these titles which, many believe, are central to holding communities together and local government and business to account.

Facebook and Google cut off ad revenue for fake news sites

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Despite Mark Zuckerberg previously claiming fake news distributed via Facebook was a tiny problem the social network has reportedly created a task force to tackle the problem.

The social network will also be following Google’s lead and cutting off streams of revenue by banning fake news sites from using their third party advertising network for publishers.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a number of fake news sites have been added to a list including misleading, illegal and deceptive sites which are already banned from using Facebook’s Audience Network.

A spokesperson for the social network told journalists: “We vigorously enforce our policies and take swift action against sites and apps that are found to be in violation. Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”

The move follows apparent wide spread criticism from Facebook employees about Mark Zuckerberg’s lack of concern about fake news sites.

An un-named source at Facebook told Buzzfeed: “We do a lot to stop people from posting nudity or violence, from automatically flagging certain sites to warning people who post content that doesn’t meet the community guidelines.

They continued: “If someone posts a fake news article, which claims that the Clintons are employing illegal immigrants, and that incites people to violence against illegal immigrants, isn’t that dangerous, doesn’t that also violate our community standards?”

Google had previously issued statement targeting fake news sites stating: “We will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose of the web property.”

Google had faced criticism following the recent US election when a story topped their election news coverage with inaccurate information about the final vote tally.

Bob Satchwell, director of the Society of Editors said: “The only way to be sure of getting accurate news is to keep reading traditional websites and to keep following traditional news sources with properly trained journalists producing the news.”

BBC Worldwide

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IDC

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Search Engine Optimisation

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Search Engine Optimisation

Getting your story out there is important. But making sure it’s seen is crucial. 

With Vuelio, you can upload every piece of content to your own search engine optimised newsroom, improving your visibility and helping your releases rank higher on all the major search engines. 

Then, boost your presence further by using our integrated media database to target the influencers who can send those all-important social signals your way. 

Overview

Rank higher on search engines

Our press release SEO tools increase your chances of ranking higher on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, and getting your content seen by journalists, influencers and the public.  

The whole system integrates with our extensive social media database, so you can get your content direct to influencers, bloggers, vloggers and more – helping secure social mentions that will make your content climb even higher. 

Optimise everything

A comprehensive SEO strategy looks at more than just text. Vuelio allows you to optimise the images and videos that accompany your releases too, ensuring you cover every angle in the search for better rankings. 

Create an online archive of all your releases with your own social newsroom, and enjoy a searchable repository, optimised for SEO. 

Go social for better rankings

Ensure your release is perfectly calibrated for social networks as well as for search engines. Our comprehensive social bookmarking tools allows you to tailor your content for sharing sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn. 

News Distribution Clients

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Press Release Distribution

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Press Release Distribution

Tell your story the way you want to, with fast and flexible press release distribution. 

Create targeted media lists then reach them by email, phone, mail, your online newsroom or the wires – instantly and by whatever method your contacts prefer.  

Our news distribution tools integrate directly with the Vuelio media database, so you can reach the people that matter to your story, topic or campaign and send them your release, all in one place.  

Then, with full engagement tracking, you can see how each communication has performed and get feedback you can use to schedule follow-up calls and optimise your next release. 

Overview

Target more effectively

Contact journalists and bloggers in the way they want to be reached and receive follow-up reports on the performance of each release.  

Vuelio includes detailed email analytics and distribution reports, which help you understand the best way to reach both existing and new contacts. With information on open rates, read time and click-throughs, you can see what works and what doesn’t, and gain a deeper understanding of your audience. 

Instant access to the wire

Send your release to all major wire services in the UK and ROI, including newspapers, magazines and broadcast news desks, plus business trade journals, news bureaus and wire services. Your release can instantly be distributed to 3,500 of the most-visited news websites, online services and news aggregators.  

Tailor your approach

Customise releases with your choice of text or HTML emails, change your sender address, and target stakeholders and influencers by area: locally and internationally, by country or by continent. And, with the ability to personalise each communication with your company logo, you can ensure your audience is always receiving the full brand experience. 

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How to Write a Press Release in the Digital Age

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Despite the real time nature of modern media, well-written, well-designed, well-targeted press releases can have a greater impact than ever.

Our latest whitepaper brings together advice and tips from journalists, bloggers, SEOs and digital marketers that will make sure your releases stay relevant in a world of rolling online news, search and social media.

Fill out the form to download it now.

Beyond the Press Release and Into the Social Age

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The New Rules of PR

PressreleaseBookletDo you know the new rules of PR?

If you are looking for certainties in the digital age, disruption is perhaps the only guarantee. So with the media landscape in a period of rapid flux, what needs tweaking, and what needs rewriting from scratch when it comes to your PR strategy?

Flip through our new white paper, Public Relations: Beyond the Press Release and into the Social Age, to see how your PR can reap the benefits of emerging best practice in content marketing, influence marketing, and internal communications.

The Press Release Clinic

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Need to revive that dying press release?

Book your appointment at The PressRelease Clinic and watch as The PR Coach, Debbie Leven, explores, examines and remedies two press releases in real time – and in under 15 minutes. The free assessment is followed by a Q&A session where webinar attendees can get a diagnosis on their press release approach and quiz The PR Coach on what it takes to get positive results.

Check in at the Clinic to discover:

  • A complete guide to writing an effective press release
  • A checklist on the key elements journalists look for in a story
  • Post-op orders that best support distribution across digital platforms

The Press Release Formula

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The press release is far from dead. Despite the real-time nature of modern media, well-written, well-designed, well-targeted releases can have a greater impact than ever.

Our latest white paper breaks down the anatomy of a press release, giving you a step-by-step understanding of the key points every press release must address. This is followed by advice from the PR Coach, Debbie Leven to make sure every section of your copy is pitch-perfect.

Anatomy of a press release

 

With this white paper you will get:

  • A visual breakdown of the key elements of a press release
  • A detailed look at what every paragraph of a press release must entail
  • Expert tips on the dos and don’ts of press release writing

 

Download our white paper and make sure your press releases work as hard as they can to tell your story.

Try it for yourself

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