THE DIGITAL PR OBSERVER NEWSLETTER ISSUE 67

Hey everyone. Welcome to Issue 67 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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The latest post on Digital PR Tips is my round up of Digital PR Learning Resources You May Have Missed From March

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

BuzzStream: What Kind of Content Does AI Cite (Based on Prompt Type)?

Connective3: Thought-leadership PR: The missing link between Digital PR, SEO and brand authority

SEO Works: Journalist Request Study: Uncovering Trends & Approaches

Off The Record: The Shift from Pageviews to Value: How Newsrooms Are Redefining Success

Digitaloft: How to Leverage SEO to Manage Your Brand’s Reputation

PRmoment: The Easter PR Stunt Watch Special

ICS-digital: How to Create Emotive Campaigns That Convert

Propel: AI for PR: What Actually Works in 2026

Siege Media: Where AI Gets Its Buying Advice [BOFU Data Study]

Jo O’Reilly on LinkedIn: It seems The Times have uncovered not just an AI generated PR source, but potentially an AI generated PR Professional

Saskia Fryer on LinkedIn: Key PR Dates for April

Jasmine Granton on LinkedIn: 5 tips when you’re speaking to your manager about your mental health for the first time… from a therapist and person who’s absolutely been in this situation

Press Gazette: Which journalists and news outlets are most cited by AI answer engines?

Digital PR Explained Podcast: We Need to Talk About “Spray and Pray” PR (part one) w/ Vince Nero

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

1️⃣ Regularly keep an eye on the status of your campaign pages, especially the ones that have built links. The last thing you want is for those pages to 404. If you do have to remove the page make sure it has a 301 redirect in place.

2️⃣ 301 redirects should ideally go to a similarly relevant page to pass as much link value as possible. If you need to redirect a campaign page, try to find another blog post that is connected to that topic, or redirect it to a commercial page with a strong relevance to the campaign. These are generally better options to preserve the value of your backlinks over redirecting to the homepage.

3️⃣ Always check the url your coverage is pointing to. If it's a link to a url that redirects to your page (such as a link tracking url or an email firewall link) then that link won't be passing any SEO value to your site even though it will be sending traffic. The same applies with affiliate links which are obviously harder to get changed.

4️⃣ Don’t ignore low search volume keywords that are relevant to your campaign. "zero search volume” actually means less than 10 searches per month. These searches can be super valuable for driving traffic and picking links up naturally (e.g via Journos researching a topic).

5️⃣ Many sites get their news from the top national news sites like The Daily Mail, Mirror, etc. That's an underrated reason why coverage on these sites are so valuable - they often lead to extra coverage from sites finding the story from that coverage rather than your pitch.

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 AllTrails

AllTrails is a fantastic site that is an online database of trails that people can explore around the world. The site is absolutely packed with opportunities for data-led stories as it covers locations globally and you can even search within 10km intervals of your postcode. In addition to that there are tons of search filters to help you create more specific stories, as well as user reviews of each trail. Think of it like TripAdvisor but for trails!

2️⃣ State Corporate Income Tax Rates and Brackets

In the U.S. there are two different types of taxes - federal rates which apply to the whole country and then state rates which differ from one state to the next. The Tax Foundation site is a great resource for getting state level tax rates all from one place. This page covers corporate income tax but there are also pages for other taxes. What I really like about this resource is that the data is easy to export but also to understand from the page itself, and it also has historical tax rates dating back to 2015.

3️⃣ UK Crime Statistics

This is an amazing resource that curates ONS crime data for the UK and gives you a much more user friendly breakdown of all the key data and trends vs analysing the data yourself from csv exports. You can search by postcode and it will give you a breakdown of the number of incidents by type of crime. The data is updated monthly too so it’s always up to date. Also a useful tool if you’re ever considering moving to a new area!

4️⃣ UK Road Safety Statistics

Here you can find all of the UK Department of Transport datasets related to road safety. There’s a whole host of datasets on different topics including the total number of road collisions and casualties per year - categorised by road type, location, the sex and age of the drivers, types of cars, and more.

5️⃣ 5G Coverage in Europe

This report by Ookla is a comprehensive analysis of 5G availability in European countries. The report covers a lot of different metrics including the countries with the highest and lowest 5G availability, the growth of 5G usage, and more.

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 Perceptions of Perfection by Superdrug Online Doctor

📊 318 RDs, 176 DR 50+

Perceptions of Perfection is for me one of the best PR campaigns out there that also adds a lot of SEO value. The campaign, that was created by Superdrug over a decade ago now, asked female graphic designers from around the world to Photoshop a female form by making her, in their opinion, more attractive to other citizens of their country.

Still to this day it’s one of the more unique formats I’ve seen and a great example of how doing something more creative can lead to amazing results when it allows you to tell a engaging story. And the story component is what made this campaign the success that it became.

The concept and the drawings from each country are interesting on their own but Superdrug did a great job of using them to visually illustrate not just the differing perceptions of the perfect body from country to country, but also how they turned the original picture into an almost completely different woman in many of the photos.

This campaign is also a great case study in the value of adding international angles to your campaign. By using designers from 18 countries they created a unique angle and story for 18 markets, which helped them to earn the incredible number of links that they did for this campaign, as well as doing a great job of shaping Superdrug’s brand image in a positive way around a mainstream topic that generates strong emotions with their target audience.

2️⃣ Social media and body image: The stats by Dove

📊 164 RDs, 49 DR 50+

This campaign also covers the topic of body image and is another fab example of the success that can be achieved by adding unique insights to an evergreen topic that people have a strong emotional attachment to. Here, Dove surveyed over 1,000 girls aged 10-17 on social media topics relating to body image, revealing that 1 in 2 girls say toxic beauty advice on social media causes low self-esteem.

The landing page is far from the best and is very basic but it shows that the most important component is the content itself. It’s also a good example of how effective surveys can be when you choose the right questions on the right topic.

As well as earning nearly 300 links on publications such as Parents, Dazed, and Women’s Health Mag, the page also drives around 300 organic monthly sessions ranking for keywords like “beauty standards” (#1 in U.S. - 5,400 MSV), “toxic beauty standards” (#1 in U.S. - 100 MSV), and “social media beauty standards” (#3 in U.S. - 250 MSV).

3️⃣ The Most Googled Sex Questions by NowPatient

📊 11 RDs, 6 DR 50+

From one campaign with a very basic landing page to one with a fantastic campaign page. This campaign from NowPatient analyses Google search data to reveal the most Googled sex questions. This is another example of a campaign that worked well earning links on sites such as HuffPost and Axios by creating audience insights data on a evergreen topic with a large audience.

The level of analysis and data vis on the campaign page is super and I love the map shown below that shows the search density per 10,000 people in each state in America for searches relating to sexual health, sex tips, and relationship troubles.

This campaign was launched in 2021 and could have worked extremely well in my opinion as an annual report that gets updated with fresh data each year to reveal trends in how people are searching from one year to the next. This is a great way of establishing strong authority on one of your key topics, not just with search engines but with your customers too.

4️⃣ The Most Popular Consumer Brand in Every Country by Business Financing

📊 68 RDs, 34 DR 50+

Another search volume campaign here, this one by Business Financing who used Google search data to reveal the most searched for consumer brand in every country. Campaigns centred around famous brands are often a great starting point for a story that will have a large audience appeal as Journalists know that headlines with brands like Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc in them will help their articles to earn more clicks - a key KPI that their work is judged on.

Once again the landing page is wonderful for this campaign with some stunning maps, and I love how they’ve also created maps for different industries such as smartphones, gaming, and fashion. This helps to create extra angles for your campaigns to give it a better chance of earning more links, as well as creating stories more tailored towards key media sectors and publications that you might be looking to target.

The only thing that I’d be critical about is the use of “most popular” for a campaign just based on search data. While I think it’s a fair assumption in this case, I always try to avoid using “most popular” for search data campaigns as popularity for me indicates favourable perceptions rather than just fame for example. A brand can have high search volumes but not be very well liked so I try to use terms like “most famous” or just “most searched” over “most popular” to avoid running into this issue.

5️⃣ The Beer Belly of America by floatingsheep

📊 55 RDs, 21 DR 50+

This week’s final campaign is a data story from floating sheep - an old blog that produced some really good data stories in the past. This one is from all the way back in 2010 and maps the number of bars and grocery shops around America to reveal where it’s easiest to get a drink based on your location.

The blog post is very basic and I feel like the data vis could do a better job of showing volumes, but it's another data story that continues the theme in this week’s newsletter of stories around topics with a mainstream audience and strong emotions that become very successful link building assets. This story was covered on some really major publications such as WIRED, The Atlantic, and Deadspin despite not having a strong brand name attached to it, showing that good stories can produce great results no matter who is behind them.

And that’s a wrap for Issue 67. 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 🙂