THE DIGITAL PR OBSERVER NEWSLETTER ISSUE 5
Hey everyone. Welcome to Issue 5 of The Digital PR Observer Newsletter.
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
NEW - The latest Digital PR jobs
If you're not already signed up, you can do so at using the button below.
Here is the latest Digital PR news and resources from the last week that you might have missed.
Digital PR Tips: How To Use Bluesky To Build A Media List
BuzzStream: 19 Best PR Newsletters That Deserve A Spot In Your Inbox
Digitaloft: 15 Statistics Page Examples That Have Earned 8,000 Links From 4,300 Referring Domains
BuzzStream: Digital PR vs Traditional PR: Why They Should Work Together
The PR Insider: How to Navigate Digital PR in Germany and Create Digital PR Campaigns That Get Coverage
Alex Cassidy on LinkedIn: Knuckleballs, or why we are applying more creativity to Digital PR in 2025
Distinctly: The art of communicating with journalists: How to get your campaigns to cut through the noise
Jessica Pardoe: How To Get Ahead As A PR Newbie
Dygence: Digital PR: The Ultimate Guide for 2025
PRmoment: Bluesky: Where journalists go, PRs will follow
Jasmine Granton on LinkedIn: What you can do in December if you don’t have a Christmas PR story ready to go
Paul McEntee on LinkedIn: 5 things that have changed and 5 things that haven’t changed in the Daily Mail Newsroom over the last 20 years
Alex Aldrich on LinkedIn: Key PR Dates for December
Linking Out Loud Podcast: Should PR Pros be SEO Experts? How SEO and Digital PR Are Evolving Together w/ Isa Lavahun
BuzzStream Podcast: Reimagining Hero Content w/ Amber Carnegie of Verve Search
Five quick fire Digital PR tips to help make you better and more efficient at getting SEO results via Digital PR:
1️⃣ If you have a new client, always check for links to 404 pages - so many quick wins you can get either by restoring or redirecting those pages.
2️⃣ Don't forget to add internal links to your campaign page. Fingers crossed that page will earn lots of links which build the authority of the page and can be passed along to other relevant pages on your site. This is great for SEO but also for directing users over to your commercial pages.
3️⃣ For reactive stories that take place every year, go back and find what the comments that were used last year looked like to help give you an idea of what type of comments sites are looking for. This is great for seasonal expert comment pieces like how to keep your house warm in winter, or how to quickly defrost your car, but also for events that will that will regularly happen, for example quotes reacting to the budget, or business earnings releases.
4️⃣ Sending data about someone else's country may seem a little odd to foreign Journalists. You're far more accepting of data about how great Spain is at something coming from a Spanish brand than a British one. To combat this include extra detail about your methodology in your pitch and why you've done this study.
5️⃣ Google Trends isn’t just for web results. You can also see what YouTube and Google Image searches are trending too.
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 Food Hygiene Ratings
Find the food hygiene rating for any UK business and easily download all hygiene data for any area. A great metric for relevant index campaigns, or finding the areas with the best and worst food hygiene ratings.
2️⃣ Business Insider Earnings Reports Calendar
Track which businesses have their earnings reports coming out soon. Great tool for newsjacking opportunities, especially for Finance clients.
3️⃣ Weather Atlas
Find out what the weather will be like in different cities at different times of the year. Lots of useful data that you can use for campaigns such as the hottest cities for a summer vacaction, the snowiest cities for a Christmas break, etc.
4️⃣ How Many Left?
A database of statistics about cars and motor vehicles in the UK. A great resource for working out the most popular car models and manufacturers in the UK and how it changes over time.
5️⃣ Rephonic
A great tool for finding information such as reviews, listener data and demos for podcasts. Also has a cool feature to find other podcasts with similar audiences.
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.
1️⃣ The Most Dangerous Highways in America by Geotab
📊 45 RDs DR 50+
I’ve linked to the Wayback Machine version of this campaign despite the page still being live as some of the interactive elements don’t seem to be working properly on the live url. I think this campaign by Geotab looking at the highway in each State that has the most crashes is a simple but very effective way of pulling a lot of data that has a ton of individual angles you can outreach. Obviously you have your State by State data, but the dataset is also broken down by type of crashes, and I would imagine with a campaign like they this they could have also ranked the most dangerous highways in each State for local outreach rather than just listing the top ranking one.
I usually recommend using a quality filter of DR 50+ when analysing the links from a campaign, but this is actually a good example of why that shouldn’t necessarily be a hard and fast rule. The campaign earned 45 RDs DR 50+, but 191 RDs in total. And when you look at the links, you can see that there’s a lot of relevant radio stations linking to the campaign that have lowish Domain Ratings, but are definitely still great sites to earn links from, further proving that Domain Rating is a decent guideline but not much else.
2️⃣ The UK’s Biggest Potholes by GoCompare
📊 5 RDs DR 50+
There’s never a set formula for what makes a successful Digital PR campaign, but one thing that is pretty much always a key feature is finding a topic that drives some sort of emotion. Enter - potholes. This campaign is a great example of how productive FOI requests can be in getting unique data that offers lots of different angles. The data allowed GoCompare to look at the size of the potholes in each region, how long it takes to get them repaired, and each council’s spend on fixing them. I also really like that they got multiple years worth of data to compare YoY changes which I assume was intentionally asked for.
I’ve found Ahrefs can be a bit hit and miss when it comes to reporting on links from UK regionals, so I suspect the actual number of RDs the campaign did might be higher. This is also another great example of finding a format that works and can be repeated year after year.
3️⃣ How Dirty Are Your Smartphones by Insurance2Go
📊 43 RDs DR 50+
Speaking of topics that will drive a reaction, finding everyday objects that are dirtier than a toilet seat always seems to be a recipe for success. This campaign by Insurance2Go is your classic swab test campaign, but by comparing it something that everyone uses on a daily basis, it’s able to garner a reaction from pretty much anybody.
I’m not a huge proponent of doing surveys just to add one single stat to a campaign as the cost:return ratio can be quite risky, but the addition of the stat on how often people actually clean their phones I thought was a really good addition to this piece.
4️⃣ Eye Yoga by Lenstore
📊 6 RDs DR 50+
Not every Hero campaign has to be a huge data-led piece of research. For me one of the most underutilised Digital PR tactics is creating a great editorial piece of content on an evergreen topic that is sort of niche, but also has mainstream relevance and can be matched up with numerous Reactive PR campaigns throughout the year. I think the concept of “Eye Yoga” is pretty cool and fits that sweet spot of helping a mainstream audience to solve a genuine problem that people have.
I was looking to see if was earning links over time and actually found that it was getting high quality links as recent as last week, despite being launched in 2020. Paul McCartney recently mentioned Eye Yoga as being one of the keys to him staying young at 82 and I’m assuming whoever is working on the Digital PR for Lenstore noticed this and managed to secure some extra coverage from it. A great example of how Evergreen Hero campaigns and Newsjacking can absolutely work together. Not every campaign needs to be a new piece of content!
5️⃣ Deliveroo Creates Special Song To Stop Seagulls Stealing Food by Deliveroo
This last one is more of a “Traditional PR” piece than one done with the aim of building links to improve rankings. It is however a great example of how brand led campaigns could be very effective for link building purposes. I think sometimes within the Digital PR bubble we tend not to focus on campaigns like this, for whatever reasons (I know there’s plenty - some valid, some less so).
If you’re ever stuck for campaign ideas, a great starting point is to just list a bunch of problems that your target audience faces and work backwards to find a solution. Then, find which ones you can find creative solutions to that could also work as a PR campaign. This one by Deliveroo is a great example of that. Sure, the solution itself isn’t that useful as a real life solution, but it is a great example of how that brainstorming process can create fun brand led ideas that get results and create a positive brand impression with your target audience, something I feel like Digital PR often sleeps on.
5 weeks in and we already have a new section added to the newsletter! In this section, you’ll find some of the latest Digital PR roles being advertised. If you’re currently hiring for a Digital PR role and want the position advertising here, you can add it using this form.
Likewise, if you’re looking for a new Digital PR role and are happy to have that advertised, drop me an email and I’m happy to give you a “looking for work” plug in this section too!
Position: PR and Senior PR Executives at Connective3 (Agency)
Location: UK, Leeds and Manchester
Remote/Office Split: Hybrid but we often come in two days per week
Salary: Up to £28,000/£30,000 but this is dependent on the role, experience, native expertise, etc
How to Apply: https://connective3.com/careers/
Position: Senior Digital PR Manager at Reboot Online (Agency)
Location: Fully remote - UK
Remote/Office Split: Remote - 4 day weeks (we don't work Fridays)
Salary: £45K starting
How to Apply: email your CV and cover letter to HR@rebootonline.com - addressed to Zoe Blogg
Position: Senior Digital PR Executive (German) at Reboot Online (Agency)
Location: Fully remote - UK
Remote/Office Split: Remote - 4 day weeks (we don't work Fridays)
Salary: £28-£32K
How to Apply: email your CV and cover letter to HR@rebootonline.com - addressed to Zoe Blogg
Position: Digital PR Specialist at Career.io (In House)
Location: Remote
Remote/Office Split: Full Time Remote
Salary: Approximately €35,000
How to Apply: https://talentwwinc.applytojob.com/apply/iaSKIzOI7c/Digital-PR-Specialist?source=Bethany+Referral or drop Bethany Watson a message on LinkedIn with any questions!
And that’s a wrap for Issue 5. 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
The latest Digital PR jobs
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 🙂
27 November 2024
