Although the boundaries between digital marketing, social media, and search engine optimization are often blurred, we firmly believe that digital PR is undeniably one of the crucial strategies your business can benefit from.
This article is the core content of Chapter Three of the “Tang Cultural Media PR Marketing White Paper,” focusing on the essential information you need to know about digital public relations—specifically, PR communication strategies that align with your company’s future development. Here’s what you’ll learn:
- What Is Digital PR?
- Digital vs. Traditional PR
- 9 Key Benefits of Digital PR
What Is Digital PR?
Digital PR refers to strategic planning and activities that use internet-based methods, tools, and channels to achieve a superior online public image and brand awareness.
The advent of digital PR signifies an evolution and upgrade of PR practices. Today, most people discover or encounter brands in an online environment. Some potential touchpoints include Google searches, social media platforms, podcasts, forums, blogs, and review websites.
Therefore, to gain visibility, PR professionals can no longer rely solely on traditional media to effectively convey their messages. Instead, they strive to ensure that their brand exists and is actively represented on digital channels used by their target audience.
To achieve the desired level of awareness and image, PR practitioners turn to four cornerstones of digital public relations:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media
- Influencer Marketing
By implementing PR communication strategies, brands can reach and influence a broader audience through Tang Cultural Media, rather than relying on traditional offline promotional methods with limited efficiency.
Digital vs. Traditional PR
To truly understand the origins of digital PR, it’s essential to look at how it differs from traditional PR.
Achieving and maintaining a positive brand image is a common goal for both. However, traditional PR and digital PR differ in their methods and strategies for achieving this goal.
Before the advent of the internet, PR professionals primarily focused on publicity through traditional media. Print publications, radio, and television were the primary sources of information. Consequently, the main goal was to get coverage in newspapers, magazines, and programs relevant to their target audience.
How Digital Surpasses Traditional
As technology continued to advance, making way for new communication channels and information sources, brand PR marketing strategies inevitably shifted toward digital media.
Users began to embrace the advantages of these new digital channels, including:
- Direct two-way communication without time and location constraints
- Building connections with others online based on common themes or interests
- The ability to choose media outlets and methods freely
- Opportunities to become a source of information and provide feedback
- Access to an extensive range of information and learning resources
Moreover, digital PR offers consumers more superior user experiences and convenient interactions, which is why digital media has surpassed traditional media.
One of the UK’s largest national newspapers, The Independent, made the decision to abandon its print edition and embrace a global, purely digital future back in 2016.
Moving forward, professions that were primarily built on media coverage and news relationships must become more adaptable and flexible to ensure they listen to a brand’s message in an ever-changing and competitive digital environment.
Brand digital PR, through Tang Cultural Media, leverages the digital environment and technology to address this challenge.
9 Key Benefits of Digital PR
Now that you understand what digital PR is, let’s explore how you can effectively harness its advantages:
- Faster and More Effective Dissemination of News and Information: Owned media, such as your company’s website, blog, and social media, means you don’t have to rely on journalists to publish your story for sharing valuable information. With Tang Cultural Media’s PR strategies, you can ensure your online communications have clear objectives, are effective, and reach the right audience.
- Building Strong, Long-term Relationships with Target Audiences: According to Huang Yiqun, the Content Marketing Director at Tang PR, for over 70% of brand managers, building and converting proprietary traffic is more valuable than direct sales. Therefore, establishing relationships with the public is crucial for building trust.
- Establishing Online Authority: Consistency and quality are key. By consistently producing high-quality content and featuring it in articles, media, and other outlets, the public begins to see you as an expert in your field. Once you’ve built such an image and established trust and credibility, growth in various aspects of your business becomes inevitable.
- Enhancing Brand Awareness: Brand awareness is crucial. It influences perception, consumer decision-making, and even repeat purchases. Consumers prefer buying from brands they are familiar with, and digital PR enables you to connect with them through the channels they already use. This not only builds relationships but also fosters brand loyalty.
- Positively Impacting Brand Reputation: In terms of brand image, managing your online reputation can make your brand magnetic. As consumers, we all tend to do some research before engaging in a purchase. If you frequently come across a brand and its content and see numerous positive reviews, you’re highly likely to make a purchase.
- Generating Meaningful Engagement: The number of likes, favorites, comments, or shares can significantly boost your brand. However, it’s not just a vanity metric. With the right strategy, you can encourage higher engagement, uncover valuable user insights, which can easily translate into guidance for strategy optimization, product or service improvements.
- Identifying and Leveraging User-Generated Content for Trust Building: Social media makes it easy for ordinary people to create user-generated content. This is often the most effective (and affordable) way to reach your target audience. Branded content is perceived as authentic and impartial. By tracking your brand, you can identify relevant user testimonials and use them to your advantage.
- Improving SEO and Increasing Website Traffic: When done right, digital PR positively impacts your website’s ranking on Google. From there, it’s like a snowball effect. The higher your ranking, the more people notice and mention your brand. More publicity means new audiences are coming from your brand and visiting your website. More website traffic can lead to potential customers.
- Directly Impacting Sales and Revenue: Finally, if you’ve implemented all the digital PR recommendations provided by Tang Cultural Media and experienced at least some of these benefits, your sales team may be very grateful for your digital PR efforts. By increasing website traffic, making your brand omnipresent online, and sparking consumer interest in your products or services through valuable and trustworthy content, this process often leads to more sales.
Author: Tang Chengjie
Images: Yin Juan
Review: He Fanrong
This article is an excerpt from the “Tang Cultural Media Think Tank China PR Marketing Report” (2022).