How B2B Businesses Leverage Digital PR in Boston

Digital PR Strategies for Boston and Beyond

Most businesses do not realize that they are in a position to control and maximize their online growth. Many of these companies remain mired in tried-and-true strategies to create name recognition via traditional media. This can hamstring an organization’s growth at the outset. Modern PR is not the PR of the aughts and requires completely different tactics to be successful.
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Discover how a Boston content marketing agency can bring your business to the next level in public relations.

What Is Digital PR?

Digital public relations is a type of content marketing that involves targeting four spheres of effect to raise a company’s profile. The main components of a successful digital PR strategy will address each of these spheres.  The intent is in creating, supporting, and distributing information about the business to any current or potential clients. The four tenets are:

• Gaining high-quality backlinks from respected websites and online publications
• Gaining publicity online
• Earning honest, positive reviews from current and former customers
• Responding with immediate comments to requests from journalists or high-visibility inquiries emerging from social media.

How Do Backlinks Work?

Backlinks are the web version of citations in an academic paper. They are links to your company website from another. Specifically, an unconnected website that contain information about the content to which the link directs. A citation from a supermarket tabloid doesn’t carry the same credence or visibility as a citation in a respected scientific journal. Similarly, the quality of such links can easily make or break a company’s attempt to improve search engine optimization. This is because the collection of backlinks a business assimilates serves as a major indicator of the trust level that Google (and others) will have their constantly evolving search algorithms then assign to the business domain.

What Types of Publicity Campaigns Work for Digital PR?

There’s a longstanding belief that “no publicity is bad publicity if they spell your name right.” However, this is becoming more and more irrelevant to the strategies that are most successful in acquiring followers. Bad publicity online and low ratings from reviewers can have a devastating impact on business reputation, which translates to a decrease in the bottom line.

Google assigns a page a rating based on their expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or E-A-T. E-A-T was confirmed via a corporate update as far back as 2018. At the highest level, E-A-T is the way that a search engine like Google can ensure accurate, truthful, and useful information. There are no restrictions on the internet that prevent a non-physician from creating a medical website. Or, a non-resident from creating a page about a particular location. Though this is part of what makes the global information network so valuable – a low barrier to entry. It also presents a problem for users who utilize this information to make important decisions. Consumers have come to expect search results that not only relate to their chosen search term, but that with reliable information.

Quality Over Quantity

In terms of metrics, Google has confirmed that E-A-T is not a measurable direct ranking factor. However, the signals that Google uses to determine expertise, authority, and trust are ranking factors. This is where publicity campaigns are the overarching methodology. Companies can use this to inform the world of their business and build an online presence.

The key to a successful digital PR strategy is establishing relationships that are mutually beneficial. Ideally, with high-value journalists and other pre-vetted digital influencers. When these relationships are created and nurtured through deliberate and personal correspondence, the trust factor of a company’s digital presence (i.e. its website) is expanded organically.  Furthermore, this improves search ranking much more decisively than targeted keywords or the tactic of “spamming” links in as many places as possible.

Common Elements of a Winning Digital PR Strategy

• Unlinked mentions: Yes, backlinks are important to drive trust. They are highly valuable and thus sought after. However, mentions of your company name that do NOT provide a link back to your website carry a significant amount of weight. Especially when considering the impact on brand recognition.
• Guest Posts: Can one of your company officers write or publish an article on another website? Ideally, this type of content should appear to be organically produced, such as a sales manager re-posting a LinkedIn blog from the other company and adding their thoughts or emphatic agreement to the sentiment described. This is strategy, and a quality digital PR strategy will create sustained relationships where this type of content trade-off is very deliberately managed and tracked.
• Press Releases: It is said that digital PR is the modern-day version of a press release, though the impact of the former is much more sustained than the impact of a once-published press release. Despite the press release being an institution of “old media,” sharing newsworthy announcements to secure press features should remain a cornerstone of any good strategy.
• Influencer Marketing: Gaining mentions on the social media accounts of any influencer with even a tangential relationship to your business space is a vital component of modern public relations. 

How To Know If Your Digital PR Campaign is Working

No strategy can be valued if there aren’t metrics and indicators that can measure the success of a campaign. Here are a few of the tools that can help you decide if your PR campaign has had an impact:

• Google Analytics: measures increases in both referral and organic search traffic
• Google Search Console: measures digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) via user clicks, impressions, and position rankings for specific keywords and URLs.
• Domain Rating: a metric that shows the strength of a website’s backlink profile. Additionally, if the secured backlinks have made the company rating stronger.
• Social Media Shares and Followers: show how many people found value in your initiative and chose to share it, while increases in followers show how many people chose to engage directly with your brand.
• Leads and Sales: The true measure of a campaign. Tallying how many leads were generated, and how many converted to sales.

Contact An SEO Agency In Boston For Digital PR Help

These and other strategies to strengthen your sales team’s practices are all just a click away, so get in touch with our GoingClear team now to get started on your digital presence audit!
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