THE DIGITAL PR OBSERVER NEWSLETTER ISSUE 79
Hey everyone. Welcome to Issue 79 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 comes from Isobel Walster, Digital PR and Content Specialist at Koozai - Your Digital PR Campaign Flopped. What Should You Do Next?
There’s also the roundup of Digital PR Learning Resources You May Have Missed From June & July
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Here is the latest Digital PR news and resources that you might have missed since the last newsletter.
BuzzStream: How to Phrase Your Subject Line to Get Opens
Off The Record: How to Get Influencer Coverage in the National Press
PressReacher: How to Pitch Health and Wellness Media by Hannah Vanderheide, Freelance Health Writer at Body+Soul & The Age
PressReacher: Tanya Gains: Why Every Pitch Needs a Clear “Why Now”
PRmoment: If AI does the junior work, how will PR develop its next generation of trusted senior advisors?
PRmoment: Can PRs exceed the "new normal" created by AI production?
Muck Rack: The brains behind Muck Rack’s media database on what’s trending in journalism in 2026
Flaunt Digital: How to Make Your Experts Easy for Journalists to Trust
Rise at Seven: Opinion Piece: The SEO vs GEO debate is making our industry look stupid
Rise at Seven: The Best Travel Marketing Campaigns That Changed How We Discover Destinations
Press Gazette: Top 50 English-language news sites in the world: BBC hits one billion visits
MerseySearch: Tuesday 1st September 2026 w/ Digital PR talks
Digital Superchats Podcast: Thierry Ngutegure, Head of Data Storytelling at Six Chillies
Five quick fire Digital PR tips to help make you better and more efficient at getting SEO results via Digital PR:
1️⃣ When searching for campaign coverage, don’t limit yourself to just searching for the brand name. Also look for:
Names of spokespeople or experts you have supplied quotes from
Headlines you used in your outreach
Key snippets from the leading quotes you outreached
Key stats from the data you pitched
Names of products that don’t include the brand name
Sometimes Journalists will use our stories but not credit the brand (🥲) so also tracking alerts for keywords that don't include the brand name can be valuable in helping you spot coverage you need to follow up with to get the brand mention added in.
2️⃣ Don't be put off pitching late morning/early afternoon. First thing is often the "best" time but plenty of stories sent during the day will still get picked up.
3️⃣ A Journalist's public social media profiles can be a great resource for revealing what topics they have an interest in, especially pop culture moments they might be posting about that also fit within their general beat of stories they publish. Engaging with them on socials can also be a great way of building relationships with them (don't force it though!).
4️⃣ Weekend editors can be great for earning coverage over the weekend. If you have a media database, look for Journos with weekend in their job title and/or regularly post articles on the weekend. Or you can do a Google site search for the domain's author pages followed by "weekend".
5️⃣ Got a client that you think would be perfect for regular Reactive PR? Work with them on a list of pre signed off quotes that you can use in response to topics that you know are likely to come up on a recurring basis so you have them available for immediate distribution rather than waiting for busy clients to reply.
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 Release Calendar
Most of you based in the UK will be aware of the ONS and what a great source they are for datasets. Their release calendar page is the perfect way to stay up to date on all of the most recently released datasets, along with upcoming datasets and what date they’re released on. Keep the page bookmarked and check the upcoming datasets at the start of each month to spot potential opportunities for data stories.
2️⃣ UK Gov National Data Library
A common misconception is that ONS is the main source of UK gov datasets. The National Data Library is home to tons more datasets from official government bodies. The site isn’t as user friendly as it could be and has become even worse in my opinion since the redesign but if you keep this page bookmarked this will show you the most recently published datasets. You’ll probably want to use the filters to just monitor datasets for specific topics or sources. For example, you can filter by datasets released by local councils which is great for monitoring potential news stories to earn coverage in a local area.
3️⃣ ACFE 2026 Occupational Fraud Report
The annual occupational fraud report conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners is the biggest global study on occupational fraud. The report analyses over 2,400 cases of occupational fraud across 143 countries, making it a great resource for finance or crime prevention brands to dig into.
4️⃣ Work and Employment Stats by Country
The International Labour Organization is a goldmine for datasets on work and employment topics. Their data covers countries all around the world too which makes it a great resource for index campaigns. This page links to data overviews for every country which includes loads of topics such as unemployment rates, share of women in management positions, and average earnings.
5️⃣ Violence Prevention Project - Mass Shooter Database
This dataset produced by the Violence Prevention Project is a huge deep dive into the life histories of U.S. mass shooters since 1966, with over 200 data points per case. Obviously this is a sensitive topic and only suitable for the right brand, but can make for a great research asset for any brands studying gun violence in America that want some data to set the context for a campaign they are working on. This database is much more than just a record of incidents, it goes really detailed into exploring the makeup of shooters and their motives.
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 best cities for a girls' getaway in 2025 by Titan Travel
📊 27 RDs, 13 DR 50+
Index campaigns aren’t especially unique these days, especially for very top level topics like the best holiday destinations or the safest cities to live. The ones that get their first do extremely big numbers but I think as they become increasingly common we’ll see more index campaigns struggling to land because they’re not overly unique. A good method to ensuring yours has a unique angle to it is niching down with the topic.
This campaign by Titan Travel is a good example of how to do that and ensure your campaign earns some great coverage on sites like TimeOut and CN Traveller. Rather than ranking the top cities for a vacation, they’ve specifically focused on the best cities for a getaway with the girls, making their story a lot more relevant to a specific audience.
The data side here is very well done too, analysing metrics such as the time taken to walk between the top 5 attractions in each city, hotel costs, safety scores, and the number of free attractions such as museums, restaurants, bars and pubs, and spas. The campaign is also a good case study for how to pick out leading data points for a range of different cities. On the landing page they’ve done a good job highlighting the best cities for individual metrics such as the best city for pubs and clubs, the safest city, and the most affordable city for accommodation.
2️⃣ The Safest Cities Worldwide For Female Digital Nomads by Holidu
📊 21 RDs, 12 DR 50+
This next campaign is another really good example of niching down with your index campaigns. Here, Holidu produced an index ranking the safest cities in the world specifically for female digital nomads, landing them some amazing backlinks on sites such as Forbes, TimeOut, and Daily Mail.
As well as niching down to target a specific audience, this campaign is really strong from a brand perspective, positioning Holidu as a brand that cares about safety for female digital nomads and creates a data story that is genuinely useful for that target audience.
The study ranked Taipei, Chiang Rai, and Montevideo as the top cities for female digital nomads out of the 200 that were analysed. I really like some of the metrics that they’ve analysed too such as how friendly the city is to foreigners and to females, legislation on sexual harassment in employment, and the ratio of female/male digital nomads.
3️⃣ Senior Happiness Index by Caring.com
📊 57 RDs, 22 DR 50+
Here’s one more example of a successful index campaign that is aimed at a very specific audience. Caring.com is a site that helps seniors find a senior living community, so a campaign ranking the happiest states in the U.S. for seniors is perfect for getting their brand in front of their target audience. I see so many campaigns like this that are somewhat niche industries but produce amazing results without straying off brand towards more mainstream topics.
Again, this is another index campaign that is really well put together from a data point of view, ranking each state against metrics such as the number of senior centers per 100,000 people, the percentage of seniors living alone, and more generalised living metrics such as cost of living and life expectancy. Interestingly, they’ve also used a WalletHub index ranking the happiest states in America as one of their metrics. Index campaigns produced by other brands can be a really good metric to use for your own indexes.
The campaign has been live for just over a year now, earning 141 backlinks from 57 domains, including sites such as Fox News, Quartz, Travel + Leisure, Reader’s Digest, and Parade.
4️⃣ 2026 Burnout Report by Mental Health UK
📊 144 RDs, 38 DR 50+
Annual reports are one of my favourite campaign formats that I still think are really slept on relative to the amazing results that they can produce, not just once, but consistently year after year if they’re executed well. The 2026 Burnout Report from what I can find is the third edition of the report produced by Mental Health UK, and each report has been a huge hit for them.
The 2024 report has 54 referring domains including The Telegraph, ELLE, and Men’s Health. Jump forward a year and the 2025 report jumps all the way up to 415 linking domains, 131 of which are on DR 50+ domains. When I analyse annual report campaigns, a common trend that I see with them is that the first edition of the report is often the weakest performer (not that 54 referring domains is weak of course).
This is why I say there’s so much untapped potential in these reports that do even good the first time round because the future reports regularly do even better. Journalist’s become more familiar with your report as a valued source of data for them, they might start going straight to your report or direct to you as the PR, your audience do likewise and the more years you publish the report the stronger the brand perceptions will become, and you also benefit from learning the things that worked best or missed the mark on the previous report. Not to mention you’ve also got a list of sites that covered last year’s report which can you pitch your new report to.
The 2026 edition of the Burnout Report was released in January and already has 219 backlinks from 145 referring domains, which will no doubt grow throughout the year. The report is also really well put together, using surveys to generate original audience insights on a topic that is very relevant to them as a brand, and also one that publications are constantly writing stories around which helps to maintain the relevancy of their report all year long. Importantly given it’s coming from Mental Health UK, the report also does a great job of building on the data with expert commentary and advice that help to provide solutions to some of the problems that the data highlights.
5️⃣ Drivers in Wales urged to check sat nav for correct 20mph data by MoneySuperMarket
Ending this week’s set of campaigns on a simple Reactive story that MoneySuperMarket did last year, raising awareness that incorrect data about 20mph roads on sat navs and smartphones could be putting drivers at risk of a speeding fine. It’s a simple story but an effective one, and a good example of how not all campaigns need to be big budget productions in order to earn media coverage.
Regional news sites, particularly in the UK, really like stories like this which highlight a potential danger/warning that their audiences might be unaware of. The story was covered across a series of Welsh regional publications such as South Wales Argus, Wrexham Leader, North Wales Live, and Nation.Cymru, showing the value to be gained from the problem —> solution format for Reactive PR stories.
And that’s a wrap for Issue 79. 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 🙂
12 August 2026
