THE DIGITAL PR OBSERVER NEWSLETTER ISSUE 86

Hey everyone. Welcome to Issue 86 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 Lizzy Green, Digital PR Strategy Lead at Wolfenden - Why the Follow-Up Email Is One of Digital PR's Most Underrated Strategies

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

BuzzStream: We Analyzed 624 Talker Research Surveys. Here’s What Actually Earns Links

Wolfenden: Why strong Digital PR campaigns never stand still

Off The Record: How to Get Your Story on Radio

Energy PR: Our Top 5 Takeaways from brightonSEO October 2026

Harriet Stanger on LinkedIn: brightonSEO Slides - The Missing Link Between PR and Profit

Reuters Institute: Digital News Report interactive

Ahrefs: AI Search ROI Is Messy. Here’s How to Measure It Anyway

Ahrefs: How to Measure AI Search Visibility When Attribution Falls Short

Ahrefs: How ChatGPT Does Query Fan-Out (15 Million Queries Studied)

Press Gazette: Metro proposes to cut 60 jobs across print and online

Chris Pharo on LinkedIn: Today The PA's PR and Marketing Division relaunches under the Hydrogen brand

BuzzStream Podcast: What Digital PR Really Does for AI Search with Ross Hudgens (Siege Media)

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

1️⃣ There seems to be a lot of Journalists recently taking stories but not even crediting the brand with even a mention. If this happens to you and you need to contact them to get it fixed, try adding a word like "correction" or "amendment" to your subject line. It's more likely to get opened than a generic subject line. This also applies to asking for links to be added to stories.

2️⃣ If you are trying to get an article amended where the brand isn’t credited, contact the Journalist who wrote the article, but if that doesn't work, also try contacting either the editor, or check if the site has a corrections email to contact.

3️⃣ Don't get too disheartened if your content doesn't get much pick up straight away. Some content becomes more relevant at a future date. Certain sites may plan that type of story far in advance and are sitting on it. Or it might position yourself as topic expert that they get in touch with for comments on future stories.

4️⃣ https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query= is a good tool to use when brainstorming campaign topics. Enter your core topic and it will show a map of related subreddits. This is also a good way of finding subtopics to further explore that you might not have thought of.

5️⃣ If you struggle with creating nice looking slides, there are loads of sites now that create slide templates which you can download and adapt to your own. Slides Carnival is a good example of one of these sites.

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 Meta Transparency Reports

Transparency reports are something that you’ll be able to find from most major brands which provide visibility into data requests such as copyright and trademark notices and government data requests. Meta’s report provides lots of great global insights for Facebook and Instagram. You can also find transparency reports for Apple, Google, and TikTok.

2️⃣ Smoking Habits in the UK

Want to know which areas of the UK has the most smokers? This dataset has you covered, with a recent update last week for 2025 data. Within the dataset you’ll get insights such as the number of current and ex smokers in each UK local authority, changes over time, and self-reported health ratings by smokers for each region.

3️⃣ Expatistan

Expatistan provides cost of living data for cities worldwide. This is a similar source to Numbeo in that it’s based on user submitted data. Both sites provide the sample size that costs are based on at the bottom of each page so it’s worth comparing sample sizes and seeing which site has more reliable data. On Expatistan cost of living is categorised by costs for food, housing, clothes, transport, personal care, and entertainment, with individual costs within each category too.

4️⃣ UNICEF Data

UNICEF has a fantastic global dataset for health statistics and how they differ by country. “Data by topic” in the menu bar will give you the full range of datasets covered, or you can also explore detailed stats for your specific nation of choice.

5️⃣ National Records of Scotland

Have you ever had the annoying experience of finding a great ONS dataset just to discover that it only includes data for England and Wales but not all of the UK or GB? Chances are that dataset exists for Scotland and Northern Ireland, just in a different place. National Records of Scotland is the best place to look for extending ONS datasets to include Scottish regions, or finding more detailed datasets specifically for Scotland.

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 Countries and Cities With the Most Stressful Night’s Sleep by Zoma

📊 22 RDs, 10 DR 50+

This week’s first campaign is a terrific example of how social media data can be used to reveal audience insights. Traditionally, PRs will go straight to a survey to get audience insights data but it’s always worth researching if similar data can be collected from cheaper sources. These also often have the added bonus of not just being cheaper but giving you a much bigger dataset to work with.

In this campaign, mattress brand Zoma analysed the stress level of sleep related tweets, using the geotagging of each post to reveal which countries and cities get the most stressful night’s sleep. The data was collected in 2021 so it’s quite old now but the study found Chile to be the worst country for stress free sleep, and the top cities for a stressful night’s sleep were Rochester, Liverpool, and Manchester. The campaign was covered on Inquirer, Narcity, and Fit&Well, along with a lovely Wikipedia link.

2️⃣ McBroken

📊 2,046 RDs, 671 DR 50+

I’m a big fan of the notion that if you create something really cool and genuinely useful or of interest to people then it will pick up media coverage, whether you’re proactively outreaching it or not. This is a great example of that even without the power of a brand and an active PR team pushing it.

McBroken is a map that Twitter user rashiq created which uses McDonalds’ internal API to reveal which restaurants currently have a broken ice cream machine, and best of all it remains updated in real time.

The map is a link building machine with nearly 11,500 total links from more than 2,000 domains. I talk a lot about sustainable link building assets that produce better results as they age and this is another example of it. After six months McBroken had earned 345 referring domains, up to 744 after a year. Despite being first launched in 2020, it still adds a huge number of new linking domains each year, with 499 added in the last 12 months alone. The page also receives over 3,000 monthly organic sessions although it’s been a lot higher in the past, peaking at 22,000. “Mcbroken” itself has over 4,000 global searches a month too.

3️⃣ 2026 AI Adoption & Risk Report by Cyberhaven

📊 530 RDs, 163 DR 50+

Reports can be magnificent link building assets when done well. One of the common themes of the ones that do really well is being built around a topic with a growing conversation. Cyberhaven’s AI Adoption & Risk report was first produced in 2023 and has been updated each year since, now earning the brand over 1,000 backlinks from 500+ referring domains that include TechCrunch, Computerworld, Cybernews, and even a link from PwC. The 2026 report also has an additional 189 backlinks from an additional landing page for the report.

Being able to pick out a growing topic like AI use in 2023 takes an element of luck but also a lot of strategic content planning. Once these reports are produced they can then become an extremely useful source of data and insights for Journalists when they cover a topic.

Having a great report built around depth of insights is one thing but as PRs what we really want is a standout juicy stat that we can work our way into headlines. Cyberhaven were able to produce that by focusing on the amount of AI interactions that involve employees feeding sensitive business data into AI tools such as ChatGPT.

4️⃣ Which AI Chatbots Collect The Most Data About You by Surfshark

📊 222 RDs, 95 DR 50+

Moving from one very successful campaign on AI to another. Here, Surfshark analysed the data collection practices of the top 10 AI chatbots available on the Apple App Store to reveal which collect the most information about you. The study which was first published last year found that Meta AI collects the highest amount of personal data at nearly 95% of the possible data types analysed.

This campaign is a great case study for the fantastic insights that can be gained from privacy details via App Stores, as well as the impact of building campaigns around topics that have a high interest from both the media and their readers. Interest that is not only evergreen but also growing over time and becoming increasingly relevant.

Having that data ready for publications to use makes it a great resource for Journalists to include when writing any article that covers the topics of AI and privacy. That’s evidenced by over a quarter of the DR 50+ referring domains linking to the page more than once, including Forbes and ZDNET.

5️⃣ The Traitors: Is a Welsh accent really more trustworthy?

One of the recurring themes across this week’s campaigns has been creating campaigns that can become evergreen assets capable of earning your brand coverage at later dates in the future. This can come via proactive outreach as a Reactive PR tactic, or by Journalists finding and using your data at a later date, either from remembering it when you first pitched the story or finding it by searching for relevant keywords that you’ve managed to get your campaign page ranking for.

This is a good example of what I presume is the newsjacking option. Last year on the UK Traitors there was a player who put on a fake Welsh accent to appear more trustworthy (that’s just the kinda unhinged show it is). In response BBC News published an article with the question - “Is a Welsh accent really more trustworthy?”.

Part of their article included reference to a study that Spa Seekers published a year earlier which found the Welsh accent to be the most relaxing accent across the UK. The BBC article only includes a quick reference to the study but it’s a lovely example of how evergreen data studies can work, giving Spa Seekers some extra coverage in addition to the coverage earned the year before from Sky News and TimeOut among others. Having a nosy at the coverage for the campaign, it seems as though Charlotte on The Traitors also helped to get the study covered on The Mirror and several other regional news sites as the show was airing.

And that’s a wrap for Issue 86. 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 🙂