THE DIGITAL PR OBSERVER NEWSLETTER ISSUE 46

Hey everyone. Welcome to Issue 46 of The Digital PR Observer Newsletter.

If you missed last week’s issue, or any others, you can always catch previous issues of The Digital PR Observer Newsletter here.

Here’s what you’ll get in this newsletter:

• The latest Digital PR news and resources

• 5 quick fire tips to enhance your Digital PR activity

• 5 data sources you can use for Digital PR campaigns

• 5 successful campaigns from the archives

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Here is the latest Digital PR news and resources from the last week that you might have missed.

Digital PR Tips: Digital PR Learning Resources You May Have Missed From September

Press Gazette: Automated PR tool is bombarding UK media with AI-generated content

PRmoment: Will Google’s SEO search changes start a PR data evolution?

Motive PR: How brands can use Substack as part of a successful PR strategy

The HOTH: The Three Tiers of Brand Mentions in AI Search (and How to Build Them)

Louise Ali on LinkedIn: GEO, Misinformation and the News: The Impact of AI on Trust of the Media

Georgia Gadsby March on LinkedIn: The easiest way to get journalists to compliment your pitch + publish your story

Amy Gibson on LinkedIn: 10 reasons why your digital PR strategy isn’t working

Jeromee Scott on LinkedIn: As a journalist, I continue to see the best and worst of PR in action. Here are a few examples from the past couple of weeks

Growth Memo: How AI Really Weighs Your Links (Analysis of 35,000 datapoints)

Ahrefs: How to Audit Brand Mentions for Modern SEO

BBC News: 'You'll never need to work again': Criminals offer reporter money to hack BBC

Search Engine Roundtable: Google AI Mode With More Visual Responses & Visual Fan-Out Technique

BuzzStream Podcast: AI and Brand Visibility: Ahrefs’ Insights from 75,000 Brands with Louise Linehan

Want to contribute a post to the Digital PR Tips blog? If you have an idea for a topic that you want to write about, please fill in this quick form here.

Five quick fire Digital PR tips to help make you better and more efficient at getting SEO results via Digital PR:

1️⃣ Reporting on the number of AI mentions that your clients/brand have is good, but adding context to those figures is important. Not all AI mentions are necessarily positive mentions. Make sure you're also providing context to how the brand is being mentioned by AI tools. Run searches asking about your brand and analyse the sentiment of the responses. Are there a lot of recurring negative stories about your brand?

Also check for key questions people may ask AI tools about your brand. For example, if customers are asking if your brand is credible/trustworthy/etc and the answers potential customers are shown aren’t positive about your brand, focusing your PR strategy on creating strong E-E-A-T signals from relevant news sites should be a key priority.

2️⃣ Something to keep in mind when analysing the success of campaigns using any backlink tool - they will never be perfect at catching every link, and can often miss highlight coverage or big syndications. Use those numbers as a guide rather than as gospel, but also Google keywords related to the campaign to see what coverage you find, as you'll also find coverage this way that doesn't link to the campaign page.

3️⃣ How to filter Google Analytics Data to just show your blog pages (assuming the blog sits in its own folder and has a consistent url structure) - on any pages report simply add the name of the blog folder in the url into the search bar and you'll filter out all of the non blog pages. This can be really useful for reporting on the performance of content pages that you're publishing on a blog.

4️⃣ If you track clicks of links in your pitch, which is generally not advised as it can result in Journalist copying your link copying the tracking url instead which won't pass any SEO value to your site, but if you do want to use clicks tracking, use words as your anchor text rather than the url. Tracked links redirect via a tracking url, meaning if the url is the anchor it may trigger spam filters due to the anchor text url being different to the destination url.

5️⃣ If your outreach tool shows you someone clicked on a link in your email, check the time of that click. If it was the same time that you sent the email at then it's probably something such as a firewall checking the link rather than the Journalist.

Each week I’ll be sharing five data sources that you can use, either for content inspo, or as data sources for your campaigns.

1️⃣ ONS: The impact of motherhood on monthly employee earnings and employment status in England

This ONS report has some very interesting data comparing how having a child impacts the earnings of mothers, finding that five years after the birth of a first child, monthly earnings were reduced on average by 42%, or £1,051 per month, compared with earnings one year before the birth. The data however is only available by region rather than cities which I know we all love for those localised angles, but the breakdown by age group is particularly interesting. Could be a great dataset for a finance or parenting brand creating content around the cost of motherhood.

2️⃣ List of 5G NR networks

Wikipedia can be a great source for brainstorming ideas using potential datasets. Many of the best Wikipedia pages for this purpose have titles starting with “List of…”, which means that if you start a Google search with site:wikipedia.org followed by either intitle:”list of” or inurl:list_of followed by some keywords to make the results more relevant to your campaign, you can get some really good starting points for potential campaign ideas. This is a good example of a Wikipedia list page that could be used - rounding up all of the commercial 5G networks and their frequency band around the world to compare 5G availability in different nations. If you are using these lists, check the references section so you can analyse how credible the source that the content comes from is.

3️⃣ 5G Coverage by UK Area

Speaking of 5G coverage data, this is a great dataset for finding the UK regions with the best 5G coverage. The data is based on the percentage of each local authority area that has 5G coverage from at least one mobile network provider, making it a great dataset that could be used as a ranking factor for many index campaigns.

4️⃣ Average Property Prices by Country/City

Each month Global Property Guide publish the latest median asking prices for 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments or flats across 400+ locations in 80+ countries. Finding good data sources that cover major cities around the world are great for index campaigns but aren’t always easy to find, so this could be a good one for city to city comparisons across different countries.

5️⃣ Global Public Opinion on Artificial Intelligence Report

This report by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society has lots of interesting insights on different AI topics and how people from 21 different countries feel about AI technology. Some of my favourite parts of the report include which countries are most optimistic that AI will make the future better, which have the strongest understanding of AI capabilities, which are most fearful of their jobs being replaced by machines, which use ChatGPT the most, views on self-driving transport, which countries most trust AI to find them a blind date, and how likely people think it is that AI could accidentally cause a catastrophic event.

In this next section, I take a look at five campaigns from my archive of campaign inspo, with some quick fire analysis of what I liked about them and what made them work. Referring Domains (RDs) figures are taken from ahrefs. As Halloween approaches at the end of the month, and we know that PRs love a Halloween themed campaign, for the next two weeks I’m sharing five of my favourite examples of Halloween PR campaigns.

1️⃣ Free “Invisibility Cloaks” For Sale by Poundland

When I think of Halloween PR campaigns this super fun campaign that Poundland did in 2019 is always the first one that comes to mind. The plan - select Poundland stores to offer free invisibility cloaks for Halloween (this could genuinely be a Nathan For You skit). Sometimes PR campaigns take months of time, stress and mind-bending spreadsheets to produce, and sometimes they can be a genius idea like this that only requires a super simple execution.

I love how they’ve had fun with their press release too, with Poundland trading director Tim Bettley quoted as saying - “We intended to trial this item last year, but couldn’t find it in the distribution centre. But now we’ve found it, we think our customers will see the value, if not the cloak.”.

I also found this review of the invisibility cloak published on JOE which is fantastic in general, but especially this line - “Annoyingly, there aren’t any changing rooms in Poundland, so I had to try the cloak on beside the rack. I was alone at the time, so asked a nearby shopper if she thought it looked okay. I was ignored, so took that as confirmation that the product worked.”

2️⃣ Sheriff Dewey Riley hosts thrilling Halloween overnight at the SCREAM house by Airbnb

📊 80 RDs, 32 DR 50+

Halloween offers some great opportunities for creative Product PR, so naturally the masters of Product PR campaigns, Airbnb, have regularly taken advantage to create some great Halloween themed PR campaigns. Airbnb are probably one of the best examples of brands finding a format that works and figuring out seemingly infinite ways to repurpose a great idea into different campaigns built around the same concept - combining pop culture with Airbnb stays.

For this campaign, Airbnb gave a small number of lucky fans the opportunity to experience a one night stay at the SCREAM house hosted by Sheriff Dewey Riley, perfectly timed to also tie in with the then upcoming release of the new SCREAM film.

Obviously not all brands have the ability to execute brand collabs that involve getting famous actors on board with their campaigns. It is however a great case study on the power of brand collabs, along with finding clever and creative ways to make your brand’s product the focal point of a campaign while still capturing both audience and media interest.

As mentioned, Airbnb are the masters of getting the most out of a successful idea, with this being a format that they’ve adapted in different years for Halloween such as stays at the Beetlejuice residence, and a night at Dracula’s castle.

3️⃣ The scariest movies - according to Science! by broadbandchoices

📊 557 RDs, 223 DR 50+

Moving on to data-led Halloween campaigns, this is one of my favourite examples of a Halloween themed campaign based around a data study. broadbandchoices’ Science of Scare study ranked the scariest movies based on how much people’s heart rates increase while watching each film. Nowadays it feels like many campaign budgets have decreased which makes scientific studies like this that involve heart rate monitors and paying people for their time a less feasible option. But when executed effectively, studies like this can make for really great PR campaigns if you can nail the storytelling aspect.

Which this campaign does a really good job of doing. It’s got the pop culture aspect which helps to make any campaign more eye-catching, it’s evergreen but also has a strong seasonal element too it that helps to make it more newsworthy during Halloween season, it’s a unique study, and it answers a genuine point of intrigue with audiences of what the scariest movies actually are.

I also love that they updated the study each year between 2020 and 2022 to help give them a fresh round of outreach every year, a big factor in why the campaign has such a large number of referring domains. For context, the page had 293 unique referring domains after one year, 452 after two, and 519 after the third year. And even after the study stopped being updated, it still picks up new backlinks from all around the world.

4️⃣ What's the cost to live on a Halloween named street? by GetAgent

📊 0 RDs, 0 DR 50+

So this campaign doesn’t show up as having any backlinks according to Ahrefs, but it is a good example of one of the tips I have in today’s issue, because if you Google the campaign you will find coverage that it picked up, but as the coverage doesn’t include backlinks it will look like a total flop if you only evaluate its performance based on backlink tools.

It’s also a great example of a story that gets done every year, but continues to pick up coverage every year too, usually for different brands each time. Using ONS data on the cost of houses in the UK and their street name, GetAgent analysed the cost of houses on streets with scary themed words in the name, finding that houses on streets with “grave” in the name sell for 53% more than the UK average (a great example of using a comparison point to make data easier to understand).

If you have a Google of searches such as halloween street names, you’ll see examples of very similar campaigns being covered every single year. When coming up with ideas for campaigns based around a seasonal topic, looking at what stories your target publications covered in previous years is a great method for finding what they’re likely to cover this year too. Obviously the downside is your content will be less unique and you have the threat of another brand launching a very similar idea, but it will show you content ideas that there is an annual opportunity to take advantage of.

Don’t just limit yourself to doing this just based on your home market either. If you’re U.S. based then use a VPN to search from a different country such as the UK to see how publications in other countries cover a topic (or use Ahrefs Content Explorer and add site:co.uk to your search to just see pages on .co.uk domains. This may give you ideas that have worked well elsewhere and also have less competition in your home market.

5️⃣ Your Halloween Decor Can Have a MAJOR Impact on Your Home's Value, Experts Warn by House Beautiful

The final campaign this week is a great example of how expert comments can be used to pick up seasonal coverage around pretty much any topic. A quick way of finding examples of Halloween stories that reference expert comments is to Google terms relative to your seasonal event, along with keywords related to your topic/expert, and then set your date range to the time you’ll be pitching your story. For example, “halloween” AND “property expert” with the date range of October the previous year. This will quickly show you lots of relevant news stories that provide great content inspo for how to create stories based around the experts you have available.

This story is another good example as well of how the news cycle is cyclical and certain stories get covered every year. Publications will always cover expert comments around the financial impact of Halloween decorations, and they always love an expert comments piece that they can frame as a warning. When I published a study earlier this year analysing the most frequently used experts in PR stories, and more specifically the most common words used in headlines of those stories, the word “warns” was the 10th most common phrase used in headlines. This shows how much Journalists love an article that they can get eye-catching words like “warns” into the headline, and trigger those emotions that make readers click on an article, or in the case of us as PRs, click on our subject line and read our pitch.

Another interesting thing that I noticed with this article that I’ve seen happen for a few different stories that I’ve earned coverage for around seasonal topics such as Halloween and Christmas, is that this article was originally published in 2024 but has been republished again this month with an updated date on the article now showing 2025. You can see the original article that was published here.

When you compare it with the current live article, you’ll see that the date has been updated, the headline has changed from “What Does Halloween Decorating Do to Your Property Value?” to “Your Halloween Decor Can Have a MAJOR Impact on Your Home's Value, Experts Warn”, but the content is pretty much identical with all of the same experts still being quoted (I think the headline has significantly improved too).

From a reporting point of view, you can probably claim these as new pieces of coverage too, but obviously provide that context to your client/boss so it doesn’t look sneaky and deceitful. In SEO terms there’s not really any extra value to be gained from this. The republished article is on a new url but the old url redirects to the new one so you don’t have two unique urls that would be linking to your site. In PR terms however, the article is republished which means it’s on the homepage again and at the top of category pages, meaning it will be getting a fresh round of visibility.

And that’s a wrap for Issue 46. Same time again next week ✌️

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Each week in the newsletter, you’ll get:

• The latest Digital PR news and resources

• 5 tips to enhance your Digital PR activity

• 5 data sources you can use for Digital PR campaigns

• 5 successful campaigns that we liked

If you’ve missed any previous editions of the newsletter, you can go through the archive of issues on the Digital PR Tips website.

Have any feedback for the newsletter? Anything you liked, disliked, or want to see more of? Send an email to matt@digitalprtips.com and let me know 🙂