Getting coverage for digital PR campaigns is harder than ever.
Everyone working in digital PR can feel that there’s more competition than ever to get their stories covered, and efforts are often bringing less reward than they used to
With the current state of the media industry there are fewer journalists, yet at the same time there are more PRs. This shift for the supply and demand in the industry means that more PRs are trying to contact fewer journalists, and the result of this is journalists receiving hundreds of PR campaigns a week from a growing number of sources.
These journalists will only be able to publish a fraction of the stories they receive, which means that you need to bring clear value to any journalists you outreach to, as well as getting the basics of your interaction right.
It’s harder, but the opportunities are still there. So are the rewards if you get it right.
So how do you get digital PR coverage?
There are no guarantees in PR. You can spend hours upon hours crafting the perfect campaign, ticking off all of the elements we discuss below, and still not receive any coverage. That’s just part of the job, but it makes it even more satisfying when coverage comes through.
And the path to getting PR coverage starts long before you get to the point of contacting journalists.
Get these four stages of your next digital PR campaign right, and you’ll give yourself a much better chance of receiving coverage for your story.
Know your digital PR goals
Before you start developing any aspect of your campaign, you need to know what you’re aiming for with your digital PR activity.
Are you wanting a story that will build links back to your website? Or is your main priority to grow brand awareness with a creative story that will get people talking?
No matter what your goal is, you need to be clear on it, as this will shape the kind of story you should produce, and what shape that story will take.
Craft a story worth sharing
No campaign gets anywhere without a story. More than anything, this is what journalists care about. You can do everything else right, but if the story isn’t worth publishing, they won’t put their name to it.
You need to craft a compelling story with a clear reason why a journalist would publish it. It needs to be relevant, timely, and fundamentally useful to the reader.
You need to have an answer for the questions ‘why’ and ‘so what’ for any digital PR campaign you produce. These are the first questions that journalists are asking themselves when they read your story.
Build a relationship with journalists
It’s easy to look at the relationship between PR and journalist as purely transactional. PRs provide stories, and if they’re good enough, the journalists provide coverage.
But looking at it in this way will cost you coverage.
You need to appreciate the pressures that journalists are under, genuinely help them by providing relevant, valuable stories and making their lives easier. These are the top three ways you can make journalists’ lives easier:
- Understand their target audience
- Stop spamming them
- Respect their deadlines
Beyond this, if you’re able to consistently provide value, your brand is relevant to their niche, and you’re able to answer journalist requests with expert comment, then you may end up building a relationship with them where they will come straight to you for any comments or information for a story where they know your brand is a relevant authority figure.
Pitch – how to get your story covered
Regardless of your relationship with a journalist, you still need to know how to pitch your campaign to them.
Once you have your story, you need to develop a hook to pique the journalist’s interest. As we’ve covered, your story will need to stand out from the hundreds that land in their inbox. An engaging hook that makes your story’s value clear is essential for getting your PR campaign into the press.
When you have your hook, you need to craft a clear, concise pitch which makes the value of the campaign obvious to the journalist reading it. You need to keep them engaged, and leave them knowing that your campaign is worth them writing about.
To nail your pitch and make it easy journalists to immediately understand your campaign, make sure to cover these bases:
- Provide data and expert sources
- Produce short, fact-filled pitches
- Include multimedia assets
By following this, the journalist has everything that they need to cover your story. They may ask for further information, but you’ve given them everything they need to understand and write about the campaign.
There is of course so much more to obtaining media coverage for digital PR campaigns than these four steps, and each of these steps merits its own article, but these are the basics that you need to get right to give yourself the best possible chance of seeing your story in the publications you’re aiming for.