Your brand’s first impression is almost always online, and you never get a second chance to make a first impression. It’s not overstating anything to say that your digital presence is critical to your visibility, reputation and success. Bill Gates said: “If you’re not on the internet, you don’t exist.”. Your customers, potential employees and investors will all do their due diligence online before contacting you. PR is a great tool to help you build your digital presence.
The challenge that every business now faces is getting itself noticed, especially in crowded online spaces. Using PR can be an effective way to overcome this challenge and help your digital presence to stand out. To get you started, here are 5 ways that PR can help your digital presence.
1. Earning credibility through media coverage
The internet is a crowded place and it’s important to realise that not all content is viewed equally. The question that any organisation needs to ask themselves is how to create content that boosts their digital presence and builds trust? The answer is earned media coverage in credible media outlets.
When your company is covered in a respected media outlet, it signals to readers that your company is credible and the content is not being paid for. It can also improve your own website’s search authority ranking. PR can help your digital presence by building media relationships and sharing PR content with these very media outlets, boosting your brand visibility, credibility and authority.
2. Becoming a thought leader
Speaking of PR content, there are lots of different types of earned media coverage that can help your digital presence. Arguably, one of the most powerful types is thought leadership content. This content enables you to position company spokespeople as experts in their industry through interviews, opinion editorials and speaking engagements. By targeting respected and relevant publications, including trade media, PR can help your digital presence by putting your brand centre stage in front of your target audience. Consistently securing these opportunities enhances an organisation’s online reach and further enhances their reputation.
3. Protecting online reputation
As outlined, earned media coverage can greatly boost your digital presence, but PR is also needed to protect that presence. In a digital-first world, one negative story can spread fast and PR plays a key role in responding strategically to this story. An organisation’s reputation is such a vital part of its success and this reputation extends to their digital presence. Using PR to proactively manage your corporate reputation protects your brand’s long-term image online. In turn, this means that anybody doing their due diligence and searching for your company can see not only how you respond during times of crises, but also good news stories that showcase the best of your business.
4. Reinforcing brand messaging
Effective communication comes down to consistency and PR is all about taking your core messages and getting them out to the right people. That includes across all digital channels – including online media, your company website and social media platforms. PR can help your digital presence by developing messaging frameworks and coordinating content across platforms, ensuring both consistency and frequency of communications. This builds recognition online and reinforces your brand identity, including your company ethos (important for employees) and service offering (important for customers).
5. Driving website traffic
Once you’ve secured valuable earned media coverage and aligned your messaging across platforms, you can focus PR efforts to help your digital presence by driving traffic to your website. By securing earned media coverage in trusted media outlets and optimising website content using SEO, this will help to generate traffic either through organic search or backlinks. It also means that audiences who discover your company through trusted media outlets are more likely to visit your website. Over time, this can build a steady flow of visitors who might just end up being customers.
Establishing your digital presence can be a challenging and time-consuming endeavour. Though PR may not be the first method that comes to mind when you think of building your digital presence, PR can be a great way to accomplish this, whether that is by building visibility and trust through earned media coverage or encouraging website visits through SEO-driven content and valuable backlinks that drive your search authority.
In short, if you agree that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, then PR is your secret weapon for making that first impression count, and keeping it strong. In a world where “if you’re not on the internet, you don’t exist,” PR ensures you’re not just online, but visible, credible, and impossible to ignore. Ready to use PR to make your digital presence unforgettable? Let’s talk.