How to Create (& Launch) Your First Digital PR Campaign

I've just launched a new YouTube channel!! The concept? I take real businesses struggling to stand the f*ck out, provide my positioning/branding/lead gen help, and record it all for YouTube. The first mini-series features three freelance marketers (copywriter Rob, ecommerce designer Laura, and non-fiction book coach Vicky).

I hope you'll set aside half an hour to watch it through. Maybe with your morning coffee? Or lunch break? Or evening onion soup? And then, the usual "Subscribe, Like, Share" would go a long, long way too.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdNXaHHVnVntg5gpveB-5_Q

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Get more reach, visibility, credibility, trust, and SEO with digital PR - a way to build relationships with content writers and journalists to get them to mention you and your business.

Today, I’m talking to Lexi Mills, a digital PR expert and Influence professional.

Topics covered:

• Definition of digital PR
• Digital PR can be used to build natural link profiles and referral networks; shape nature of your brand; and make a kickstarter campaign successful
• Digital PR cannot be used to get money, unless to get an audience to draw feedback for your product
• Lexi uses her skills to get coverage for different reasons; she pushes people to be more aspirational or interrogates them to determine what they want
• Asking the right questions can get you to the right goals and find out what is genuinely interesting about a business
• PR or digital marketers need to have an element of genuine enthusiasm
• Most common way to use digital PR in a business is for internal communication; helps make people work more productively, smarter, faster, harder, and independently
• Step-by-Step Process: Step 1) Why? Why was the company founded? The products developed? 2) Why is it interesting? What is good about your product? What are your reasons for launching the product?
• Find the real reason - that’s the beginning of your story
• Build-Up Points: Why are you doing it? How could it be better? How is it already great? What are you planning to do as a priority? What was the incentive behind it?
• Acquire resources, such as media lists, within your office
• In journalism, urgency is important to coverage; if it doesn’t need to be done now, it gets put to the bottom of the file
• Ask questions about why journalists want it now: Who would be interested? Who do you already know? What publications do they write for? And then you look at what are they writing now? What do they written recently?
• Larger companies have an in-house PR person to know what publications, what journalists to cover, and what all they should do
• Domain Authority: Mass metric used to indicate strength of Website and sometimes but indicator of influence
• National news outlets used to be the most influential places. Now, a variety of metrics are used to determine what will drive behavioral change, actual influence, and traffic.
• Media List: Put about 10 on each and tear them according to ones you think are going to be the most important to your business; start calling them and chat through email or Twitter
• Build a niche Website that influences your ideal target market; big brand influence in publishing is not the same as niche influence, especially in emerging markets
• Identify your publication and the journalist who speaks about your subject; and then look at comments, which can generate ideas for future digital PR content
• Journalists serve other humans; focus on people to get their attention
• Journalists are always looking for an angle; something that makes your product relevant to someone
• Always try to be honest with journalists and the media for relationships to have integrity
• When trying to generate new sales leads, ask everyone in the office who has a contact to any of those companies
• Be specific when contacting journalists and the media; give an incentive to get the most precious commodity they have - their time
• Don’t be desperate; urgency makes them stressed and you needy
• Learn about wellness. What does it mean to be well? What does it mean to be unwell? If you know what it’s like to be stressed, then you might be able to communicate better with a journalist who is stressed.
• Know what it means to be human and what it means to be human is changing because its influenced by technology and the world around us; technology and connectivity is advancing at an unprecedented rate
• Step outside of your industry and learn as much as you can

Resources mentioned:

• Content Distribution Plan: An In-Depth Process for Driving More Traffic
• 7 Steps To Launch Your First Outreach Marketing Campaign
• Lexi Mills Website; Twitter
• Learn Inbound
• The Happiness Advantage book
• Chocolate Wars book
• louis@everyonehatesmarketers.com

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→ Buy my book: book.stfo.io
→ Watch my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdNXaHHVnVntg5gpveB-5_Q
→ Take my 60-second quiz: stfo.io/q
→ See my pretty face on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgrenier/
→ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3p4wL4r
→ Leave a review on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iEF1qovZZiaP1iRtxGARo

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