A great way to gain high-quality backlinks to your website is by coming up with a Digital PR idea that grabs headlines. Not only will you bring better brand awareness, but the type of links you will be gaining will be high quality and relevant, pleasing Google’s backlink policy. Google views backlinks as votes of confidence from one site to another, so receiving high quality backlinks is critical for your long term SEO strategy. However, to have successful digital PR ideas, you need to have effective ideation sessions.
Keep on reading to find out how you can come up with compelling Digital PR ideas that gain traction.
1. Have an ideation session
- Idea experimentation
- Mindmapping
- Drawing
- Brain dumping
One of the first steps to take would be to have an effective ideation session, bouncing around ideas with your team and colleagues. This can help generate ideas that can then be enhanced and developed further, often with supporting data from your industry.
Ways this can be done include investigating what is current and relevant in the market and industry, such as taking inspiration from magazines and publications in order to see what people are talking about.
From here, ideas can be measured to see if they already have press interest, and are on brand. If an idea has high press interest already, you know you are more likely to duplicate an idea that is already out there. You could then reconsider the idea from a different perspective, or even create a headline that highlights previous significant press coverage.
This was an interesting topic covered at Brighton SEO this September by Katy Powell, titled ‘Ideation: Thinking beyond the first idea’.
2. What relates to the reader?
A next step would be to research what relates to the reader. To increase the chance of an idea being picked up by the press, it needs to relate to the reader and solve their problem, or relate to an experience.
For example, the wet summer of 2023 was a period that everyone was talking about, as unfortunately it ruined many summer plans. Coming up with a fresh perspective on this topic has the potential to resonate with the public, and is more likely to be picked up by the media. One way to do this is to put yourself in the audience’s shoes. Get inspired by looking at popular channels people use to solve a problem, like TikTok or Reddit.
Looking at trending hashtags or questions can also help you see what is trending at that current moment, and ideas can be generated around those topics.
3) The importance of data
Implementing data into your Digital PR ideas helps to build credibility and trust with readers, increasing a brand’s reputation. Data can of course support your idea, but sometimes data can also spark an initial digital PR story.
Google Trends can provide insights into popular trends on a search term, and there may be a term that has peaked based on a specific event which can inspire and help support your content ideas. If the data is recent, it will be likely the story has been uniquely mentioned before.
4) Ensure everything is ready when contacting journalists
When you are pitching your story to journalists, ensure everything is ready for them to easily upload your story. You could have a great idea, but if you don’t have everything set whilst reaching out to journalists then there is a chance your story will be ignored or missed.
For example, this can include the press release and any images that the journalist will need to upload your story. Ensuring everything is easy and ready to go will increase the likelihood that the publication will focus on your story, over contacting you for more assets.
The Snowball Effect
The more you do PR campaigns that are featured on high-quality, authoritative websites, (that have good Domain Authority, Trust and Citation Flow), the easier it will become to be featured on websites in the future. This is because journalists and editors can see that you are trusted by other outlets and consequently they are more likely to trust your story. However, don’t forget you will still need a strong and powerful initial idea to pitch.
This snowball effect can be said for the Digital PR campaigns we manage at Varn, as the more links we gain on high authority, trustworthy websites, the more likely potential clients trust us to gather ‘do-follow’ backlinks for their own website, in their industry/niche.
Successful Varn Digital PR Stories
We have expert experience in creating data-led headlines that make it onto high-quality websites.
For our client Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parks, we have created a campaign based on ‘Devon’s Best Reviewed Beaches’ which gained coverage from the likes of Devon Live, Birmingham Live and the Sun.
We also worked on creating World’s Largest Jute Bag record, broken by Cotton Bag Co, which gained links from Wiltshire Life and The Mirror.
At Varn, we offer data-led digital PR that examines trends in your industry and sector in order to create a compelling and engaging story which we will then work on your behalf, to pitch that story to influential bloggers and journalists.
Get in touch with our expert Content, Outreach and Digital PR team to find out more.
