The 3 Keys of A Successful Digital PR Campaign by Tamara Sykes (Stacker Studio)
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Tamara Sykes of Stacker Studio joined the Clearscope webinar to share her 3 keys to building a successful digital PR campaign.
Here are our biggest takeaways from Tamara’s talk:
Be prepared by defining your goal and narrowing in your audience.
Be creative and use stories. Tamara believes a story must satisfy at least one of these: pursue unusual, interesting, and unique angles.
Focus on quality over quantity. Bad and spam pitches may land you on the Twitter’s #PRfails.
Watch the full webinar
Check out Tamara’s slides here.
And check out the resources Tamara’s shared below:
Tamara was kind enough to share the questions she asks experts and her Digital PR campaign template.
Questions to Ask Experts for Story Ideas
What isn't being talked about right now that you think should be?
What's coming down the pipeline in terms of innovation in this industry?
What's the biggest pain point you're seeing your audiences or customers face right now? What are you doing to solve or mitigate it?
What are your areas of focus for the next quarter? Why?
Are there any experts, or is there any data in your industry that no one has researched?
Campaign Template
About Tamara Sykes:
Tamara helps brands create the ideal public persona that supports their digital and traditional marketing. During her career, she's become one of the go-to integrated communications experts for Moz, Semrush, Marketing Brew, and more.
Follow Tamara on Twitter: https://twitter.com/baydiangirl
About Stacker Studio:
Stacker Studio empowers brands to build meaningful authority by creating newsworthy features on their behalf and distributing them to 3,000+ trusted news sites across North America, including Chicago Tribune, SFGate, MSN, Miami Herald, and more. The result? High-quality earned media and authoritative, earned links.
Follow Stacker Studio on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacker
Read the transcript
Tamara:
Today we're just going to chat about the three keys of a successful digital PR campaign. I encourage you to ask questions. I know this is not going to cover everything, but I wanted to cover at least the things that will get you to great results. Let's get started. There we go. I was like, "Is it happening?" Okay, who am I? Basically, I'm the outreach manager at Stacker. As Travis mentioned, I've been featured in a lot of these places. Feel free to reach out, to learn about those articles, but we're not here to really talk about me. We're here to talk about how can we get the brand that you work with internally or as a client results. Let's just dive in really quickly.
Tamara:
Did you know that 56 of brands struggle with their authority? When I'm speaking about authority, I'm really just referring to down here, the off-site authority. A lot of times, even though it's difficult to get buy-in for technical SEO, clients do understand that's important, especially when they have a user experience issue. Again, I feel like most brands and clients understand the whole idea of on-site content, but when it comes to getting off-site authority, which is getting backlinks, getting mentioned in the news, podcasts, on blogs, getting third-party validation, that's where we start seeing everything breaking down. That's where digital PR comes in. We're going to talk about how you can really create a campaign that will do well and all the steps you need and the tools you need to accomplish that.
Tamara:
Okay, to start, let's just align on this one thing, which is, what is digital PR? I guess people have thought different things about it over time, but here's a true definition of digital PR. It's earning the right coverage to connect with the right audience and establish brand authority. I just want to stress everything underlined here. When we're talking about right coverage, and we're going to go into this, you have to understand the coverage can come from a lot of places. It can come from trade media, traditional media, influencers, celebrities, bloggers, aggregators, other companies. There's so many places that you can actually get coverage from, but it's only the right coverage if it's reaching the audience that you actually want to talk to. It's not the best for your brand if it's just random. Again, you're throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks type thing.
Tamara:
That's how you get to establish brand authority because the people who you want to buy from you, learn from you, chat with you, recognize your brand are your right audience. They're only engaging with specific outlets or specific types of media. That's why we always say this definition for digital PR.
Tamara:
Okay. Next we have, what are the three keys? It comes down to three things. I wish I had a really cool acronym here for everyone. I was trying to find it, but it doesn't really exist. We can just call it PCO. The three keys are preparation, creation and outreach. Every time you're creating a digital PR campaign, you want to make sure that you are tap into these three things. The biggest mistake that companies make, now we're talking about what makes you successful, but the biggest mistake people make is assuming that you can jump entirely to outreach right away and not do any of these things, like the first two, especially prep. Let's jump into what that even looks like really quick. Preparation is key. You got to prepare, right? We've all heard the things that if you don't prepare, you're preparing to fail. We've heard that cliche quote all the time. You have to prepare just like if you're making a recipe in the kitchen, it has to happen for digital PR campaign. You have to have all your ingredients ready before you even create anything and before you let everyone know how amazing what you're making is.
Tamara:
How do you prepare? Step one, you want to define your goals. What is the entire point of you doing this campaign? Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Do you want certain people to know who you are, know your name? Do you want them to trust you? Do you want them to go to your website and get more traffic? Do you want links? Again, show that you're an authority in this space and improve your thought leadership. Are you trying to get customers to buy from you? Is it about customer acquisition? Is it about getting a list of names that you can have your sales team then call and convert and those become actual actionable leads? What is the point of the campaign? If you don't know this, again, saying this very strongly, then you're not ready to create anything. You have to know what the goal is because there are different tactics, different types of media that will help you accomplish these goals.
Tamara:
Next, you have to determine your target audience. Who are you actually speaking to? Now, in my experience, this is actually the toughest question to answer because most people respond with a very generic phrase like, "I'm trying to get national coverage." Okay, but talking to who? Or, "I'm trying to reach moms." Okay. That's great. I'm a mom myself, but what type of moms? We have working moms. We have stay-at-home moms who are technically still working moms, but in a different profession if you think about it. We have moms who work in corporate versus working at a startup. Our lives are completely different. You have to understand who you're reaching. Where do they live? The mom who lives in the suburbs or in downtown might be completely different than the mom who lives in a rural area. You have to really understand who you're speaking to.
Tamara:
How do they speak? If you're speaking to people of color or someone of a different nationality or ethnicity, they're different terms for different things. If you're speaking to someone who's from the US versus in the UK versus the Caribbean where I was born. We talk about things completely different. We have different mindsets. We use different phrases. We have different concerns in our life, and we might actually pay attention to different media. It's like social media, for example. Some people really love Facebook. Some people really love Instagram. Some people really love Twitter. When you're thinking about media and journalists, their outlets do different things. Who are they speaking to and how does that tie into the target audience that you have? Who do they actually care about? I have a really actionable tip for you here because this question can be so challenging to answer.
Tamara:
Unless, again, if you're great at it, kudos to you, love it. For the rest of us, even myself, who've been in this industry for a while and you still have a challenge answering this question. SparkToro is a really good tool to use. An example I brought up here that you can see on the screen is prepared meals, right? SparkToro is an audience intelligence tool. It was founded by Rand Fishkin who also had founded Moz. There is an aspect of even just helping with your SEO that is already built into this tool, but it also brings the PR insights that you will need. Again, when you're preparing after you understand your goals, who is your target audience? Using prepared meals as an example, you can just type it in here when you log in, as you can see in this top screenshot, typically it'll tell you here's how many people talk about this? Here are the top words they use in their bio. Here are the top hashtags they use, which can actually help you do more research on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Tamara:
You can get an idea of what questions they're asking, what their concerns are. Demographics, psychographics, all of that. As well as frequently use phrases. These phrases can allude, I'm not saying it should ever replace a keyword tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, but it can give you a starting point as to what keyword they may want to be searching for in Google. It can also give you a really good idea on what words should be included in your content when you get to that creation point. Something I do want to point out too, is still important to do with the research is that prepared meals and meal prep can is sometimes used synonymously. If you really dig into your audience, you can understand they want two different things.
Tamara:
Prepared meals is I want it to come to my door already cooked, already done. I just want to heat it up in the microwave and go. Whereas meal prep tends to be synonymous with brands like Home Chef, Blue Apron, that kind of thing. That's why this data is so important to look into because you could have words that are used by the same type of audience, but you need to understand their concerns even more. Is that making sense so far for everyone, hopefully?
Travis:
Yeah. Crystal clear.
Tamara:
Cool. Okay. Some other things you want to know is just who do they follow? Who do they engage with? Maybe there's some hidden gems and this is why I love SparkToro for this is because you can actually see who has high engagement and who may not be The New York Times cooking and food section, right? Granted, we would all love to be in New York Times. All of our clients would love to be in New York Times, I hope. There's just an understanding that this is going to be tougher to secure than maybe the people here on the hidden gem section, right? It's just nice to know that these exist. Again, you don't have to spend hours and hours on Google. Again, Google's still one of the best tools to use, which I'll touch on in a second, excuse me. You need some place to start your brainstorming. Some place to understand where you can at least reach out to get some coverage.
Tamara:
Again, like I said, it's different based on your goals, but this is just a good starting point. I do want to say you can use SparkToro for free. It gives you five queries a month and you at least get these high level insights. If you pay for it, you can actually click in and see a lot more results than what's shown here in this screenshot. Just a FYI. If you're like, "I don't have the budget." You can still use SparkToro. You got five searches a month versus if you pay for it... I've paid for it before and it's absolutely worth the money if you want to get these starting points. Just a heads-up.
Tamara:
Okay? Now you have your target audience. You have your goals, which is super important. What's the last step of this preparation and that is you need to develop a campaign plan. You don't need something super fancy. A Google Doc is absolutely fine for this part. The point is you need to understand what the map that you're going to follow is to get to that goal that you set in the beginning or a combination of those goals. Again, you have the goal, which I always say put at the top of that doc. Then you also have who your audience is with all the demographics, psychographics, all the different things that you need to know about them. Just to make sure you keep them top of mind as you create content. Next, some other things you want to add in there as a key message or key messages.
Tamara:
A key message is basically, what do you want to come from this content? What do you want to say about your brand? What do you want to say about the content you've created? You need to always make sure that a journalist, media, they understand what that message is. That could be a sentence. That could be a paragraph, but you want to make sure it's again, stamped on this content. If we go back to prepared meals, as an example, just because I already brought that up. What you want to always have in any content you create is this message that prepared meals maybe helps a mom throughout her day and makes her life easier. Or it helps the working professional have an easier life and keep their health up to par, maintain their health goals.
Tamara:
There may be a few things that you really, really want to focus on and you want to make sure they're always told or there's always this angle that supports that message in your story. It's important to have those written down. You may not ever use them word for word in the content, but if a journalist is using it for a story, you're pitching an angle, maybe they asked an expert that you have about what this story means for the general public or for your right audience? You want to make sure they're tapping into that. We already talked about audience persona, but the next thing is key media. Referencing back to SparkToro again, we keep tying it all together. You need to at least know what type of media outlets or what the media... Again, this could be across social or just online in general, or even just trade media.
Tamara:
What type of media? What are the URLs that you're audience is actually listening to, engaging with and just have a starting list. It's not going to be comprehensive at this point, but just a starting list. We saw earlier in that slide, New York Times cooking and food, Bon Appétit. You can at least start with something and besides a Google search, you can always use the keywords that pop up on those sites in your SEO tool to find similar sites. Again, if you're paying for SparkToro, you actually get an entire list of sites anyway. Then maybe over time you might start seeing other sites like aggregators, maybe other companies, maybe the content you want to create would be good for a Home Chef or Blue Apron to buy into. Just spitballing, but there's a possibility that might be a thing.
Tamara:
You want to write that down because again, it gives you some idea of who you're going to target and reach out to. We'll talk about this more in depth soon, that you can reach out to buy your content. Lastly, content format. There's many different types of content you can do. You can do thought leadership content. You can do data journalism, if you really want to focus on what the data does. How it speaks to something? You can do surveys. You can do a resource guide like, "What again?" We know our goals. We know our audience. We know how they receive information. What their concerns are. What kind of outlets they're engage with. Again, what kind of media we're going to probably reach out to. You also need to understand to like "What kind of format should I create this content in?"
Tamara:
Are you going to need videos? Are you going to need expert commentary? Are you going to need data visualizations? There's so many things you may need. Again, having that in your plan just helps you understand the resources you need. Again, just puts it all together in one spot, like a North Star. I love to use that term. It's a North Star. As you pitch and outreach and refine the messages and everything you do in a digital PR campaign, just helps you become successful in the end. I'm going to take a breather really quick. Are there any questions about this part so far that I should answer now?
Travis:
We do have one question but I think it may be better to address at the end.
Tamara:
Okay. Cool. Well, then I'll keep going. Step number two, you have to be creative with the stories to get noticed. This is just going to stay here for just a second, because I need to stress something here and emphasize that before I move on to the rest. The key is it has to be a story. There has to be a why. Why is this important? Why should the journalist reader actually care about this? Why should the journalist care about this? There has to be a why. There has to be a problem. It's solving some sort of interesting thing that it's helping address. That's super, super important.
Tamara:
And what? You can't just say, "This happened." You have to say, what is it that exactly happened? You have to really define that so someone can actually consume that and understand it. I do want to point out here, it has to be a story. Again, this is not just about creating. Even if you have a guide, there could be a story within that content format. There could be a story within the data visualization. There could be a story within a thought leadership article. There needs to be a story there. It needs to be something that we can sink our teeth into and we can understand and be like, "Oh, I resonate with this. This helps me understand a concept, a data point." Anything like that. Just wanting to stress that here before we jump into the next stuff. How do you actually, again, have creative stories?
Tamara:
How do you do this? How do you even get to the story pointless? We can talk about stories all day, but there needs to be a how, like, "How do I do this?" The first step is you need to pursue unusual, interesting, and unique angles. Again, I don't have a really fun acronym here for everyone to remember, but unusual, interesting, and unique. It can be either or a combination of all of these one. Again, it just needs to be at least one of these things, because this is what's going to get you noticed. This is why a journalist is going to respond to in the email. For a journalist, at the end of the day, their reader is going to pay attention to. This is also, what's going to get you what we call passive links as well. At the end of the day, a successful campaign gets you links from outreach, but it also gets you links over time.
Tamara:
These are the things that really help you stand out. An example that we did here at Stacker was four charts that show what Biden's student loan forgiveness means for America. We know about student loans. We knew this was coming in August and we prepared for this announcement. Basically after it dropped because we timed it well, which we'll talk about next is coming up right after this. We were able to really show what that announcement and what forgiveness in general would mean for the target audience, Americans who have student loan debt, it's a huge high numbers. That's an interesting angle. What does it actually mean? You hear the announcement, but what does it mean? What does it mean for me as an everyday person?
Tamara:
What does it mean for you as an everyday person? What does it mean if you live in a certain state, a certain metro, a certain county, and so at Stacker what we did with this piece and that's just an example. Again, one example of what you could do in finding unusual, interesting, and unique angles. Again, I'm just going to drill down a little bit more on how you can this. How to find newsworthy angles? Now, if you are a marketing genius, you could probably come up with a lot of this on your own without checking any of these things. I consider myself someone who likes to process and find information. I'm going to stay more on the, I love what I do. I'm considered a genius at it, but I'm going to just dive and look at what other people want. These are some of the most underutilized tools in finding these newsworthy angles.
Tamara:
Twitter and Reddit can't stress enough. If you have done your audience research and you at least have hashtags from a tool like SparkToro, or you anecdotally know, you can just plug in the hashtag in Twitter in the explore section. You will probably start seeing a lot of conversations happening around that hashtag. Reddit is another one that I know people are generally scared of. Reddit is a really good conversation platform. Whether people are griping about something, attacking something, analyzing something, they're discussing it. Typically you can find unanswered questions or unanswered angles in a Reddit thread, you'll be surprised. That might be something that a journalist... It would peak their interest. I know journalists who do actually use Reddit a lot. Something to consider, if you're trying to understand like, "I have this topic. I have this content that I want to create, but I'm not sure if this is too generic. It's not surprising at all."
Tamara:
You can look in these two places to find trends or questions people are asking that need to be answered. Another big thing, super important. Look at recent news and headlines. Here's why. Sometimes the idea that you have, or the angle that you have has already been covered. Unless you have something new to bring to that angle, you might not want to invest more time in creating content on something that's already been done before. You can use tools like BuzzSumo to see what's the highest performing content. I say use Google News. Again, use Twitter because Twitter is where a lot of journalists are. You can even use Instagram. Look and see what actually has been talked about that topic that you actually want to cover, or maybe the idea you have. Also, maybe see what hasn't been talked about in that topic.
Tamara:
Maybe it was covered in one way, but someone didn't talk about it in another way. I'm going to use a really broad example. Everyone right now knows that real estate is a mess. It's a mess in US, but most of the headlines like these states are too expensive to live in. Or these states are out of home supply. What about the states that do have home supply? What about the states that are not expensive to live in? Again, just more interesting. It's a different angle. What about the states that are just middle of the road? You could probably find something a little bit different to tell than just be saying the exact same thing that everyone else is saying like, "The real estates a mess. People can't afford homes." We all get that. We've heard it multiple times. Try to find something different.
Tamara:
Lastly, ask expert specific questions about the topic. You would be surprised how an expert on that topic may be seeing a trend that hasn't been talked about yet. Not even in the news, the headlines, Twitter, or Reddit. Maybe they're like... I'm trying to think of one I had... This conversation with recently. I asked like, "Hey, what's something that isn't being talked about in the news right now?" I was talking to someone who's in the movie industry and they're virtual locations. I'm like, "Oh, I never thought of that." I watch movies all the time. We all have a Netflix subscription or some sort of subscription. I'm a huge Marvel fan, just plug. At some point I've never considered in my life that there's a virtual location. I just always assume someone travels to a country or a set and they do a movie.
Tamara:
Just by talking to the expert and asking them like, "Hey, what is not being talked about?" Or, "What's something innovative happening in your industry right now that you think people should pay more attention to?" I learned something new and that could spark a headline about just movies that have used virtual locations to create the whole movie. That also makes me think of this headline of, "Hey, how does that affect the film budgets?" Like, "Is it costlier to do a film when you have to fly everyone everywhere and they have to be there for six months." Provide food and people, all this stuff versus like, "Hey, you just sit in Hollywood." I'm just using an example random and you just do a virtual location, like, "Does that change the amount of money that a producer spends on the budget?" That'd be cool to know. Does Marvel spend less money?
Tamara:
I think even while talking to this expert, they shared that Star Wars, The Mandalorian was completely shot virtually. I Had no clue. When you ask questions to the experts, that's where you start getting some interesting angles too, that maybe no one else can really tap into or knows, maybe. I'm just crossing our fingers here. We don't know. Just some examples. Any questions so far about this that I should answer?
Travis:
No. My mind's blown about the Mandalorian.
Tamara:
Right? It's crazy. I had no clue. I didn't even know virtual locations were a thing.
Travis:
Same.
Tamara:
This is how you find some angles. Now I have some screenshots for you just to give you an idea. A hashtag on Twitter, that's really helpful. Whether you know what hashtags your client uses or your audience uses. Journal requests is really, really important. I prefer to check the top and the latest, but what this tells you is what a journalist is already looking for. It's like the HARO concept. It's constantly updated on your Twitter feed and you don't have to put in your email for it necessarily. If you go to journal requests, you can at least see what's popping up just every single day. I check this at least once a day myself. You can also do journal requests and add the topic.
Tamara:
Journal request, prepared meals. Journal request, lawyer. Journal request, anything you want to, any topic, personal finance. You'll typically see what a journalist is asking for. Whether it's an expert or maybe as a concept they're already talking about that you're like, "I could create a piece or find data around that." There you go. A story is handed to you and you also know who to reach out to because they're writing about it. Just a neat tip. Secondly, this one is Google News right here. I pretty much have Google News pinned on my Chrome. Some websites, again, offer the top five things that day. I know CNN does that. USA Today does that. Axios is also a really good newsletter to subscribe to. The point is you just want to get yourself familiar with headlines.
Tamara:
It actually helps when you're pitching as well, because you can pitch headlines that make sense, and it catches a journalists' attention. You also want to understand what's happening and track the trends and maybe you'll start seeing a topic that, again, you could cover. I put these two down here. There's a bunch of questions. If you need the full five, just holler at me on Twitter and I'll send them out. Again, what I said, you can ask the expert, what isn't being talked about right now that you think should be. Also, this one is actually really cool. What's coming down the pipeline in terms of innovation in this industry. Obviously, I mentioned the virtual locations is one that blew both Travis in my mind when we heard about it.
Tamara:
Again, maybe there's something else coming. Maybe there's some AI created movie set that we have no idea about yet, but this person, because this is their expertise. This is what they focus on. This is their business. They know that's coming on the pipeline. You can actually create content for that too. Just some tips that you can practically take away and put into action and start generating some story ideas.
Tamara:
Okay? Ooh, I got to breathe. Next thing is time the idea. I can't stress, how timing is the most important part. You can have the best idea ever. Okay. You have the creative story, but if you don't time it right, it could unfortunately fall flat. This is a lot of times where campaigns go off the rails too. You have to understand when's the best time to publish this. The easiest way to do that is are there holidays, events, observances dates that could really help or hurt your story. Sometimes and I'll show you actual real life examples that we had at Stacker recently that would really bring this home. Did you know that you can tap into their safety observances. Excuse me, like Mental Health Month is in may. If you want to drop a mental health story, even if it's personal finance, that's probably the best time to drop it. You should prepare before that and create your content and also know who would be looking for that content before that time, around that time.
Tamara:
The same thing actually happens with gift guides. A lot of gift guides, they're already looking, at least on my end, I've definitely been like, "Why is Target already have their Thanksgiving stuff out?" You're thinking it's only September, right? Targets marketers, they all know that maybe Tamara may be concerned. Tamara, just speaking to myself in third person. Tamara may be concerned about, "Oh, it's only September." That's really the best timing to start thinking about Thanksgiving. That's how it is in media as well. Some gift guides happen three to four months in advance. Some six months in advance. To know that, will help your story and if you don't know that it hurts your story, because you're sending the information about your brand too late.
Tamara:
Just some things to think about. Now, let's talk about the practicality of this all. Let's start with Queen Elizabeth, who unfortunately passed away recently. This won't affect every single industry and there is some nuance to this, but for the most part, whether you were in the UK, the US, almost any country on the planet, most journalists probably stopped what they were doing if this had anything to do with their beat and their topic to cover this story. If you had a story like this one, which Stacker had, who was in a royal succession? Her death was a signal to update this story. We knew it would get traction around that time, which it did. However, if you had another story, maybe it was about real estate or maybe it was about someone else who was a celebrity passing away.
Tamara:
It probably wasn't the best time even though their death is still important. Again, I'm not saying it's not important on the flip side, it's just, sometimes there's certain news stories that take precedence in the news cycle. You just need to be aware that it's probably not the best time to send that story. Another example this might help is if you were pitching someone who was a UK journalist, it may not be the best time because when the queen or a monarch dies, everything shuts down in the country. Now I'm not from the UK. I'm just, again, speaking really high level here, but everything shuts down. If they're going to only focus on sharing stories about the queen and they're about to have a bank holiday, which is how they shut down the country, it's probably not the best time for you to pitch anything because it's not going to go anywhere.
Tamara:
It's going to fall on deaf ears, so to speak. That's just one example. Another example is if you can anticipate an event. If you know like, "Hey, Biden has said..." Again, this is not about political party. It's just what happened recently. Biden has said, "I'm going to say on this date, around this time, what my student loan forgiveness plan is." This is more of a newsjacking thing. You definitely want to be prepared for that. If you have a story in mind, if you have data, if you have experts that can speak on it, you want to be prepared for that event. You don't want to wait till it happens. You want to prepare and then within 24 to 48 hours, you can drop your story and know it'll get good traction. Those are just two examples. Again, if everyone was focused on student loans that day, then dropping a story about the Fed hiking the mortgage rates, maybe that's not the best day to talk about that. Just two examples there. Any questions so far in this? We're good?
Travis:
We're good.
Tamara:
Okay, cool. I hope everyone's following along. Okay. As far as creating the story, you have to create the content and all the assets. That's why we talked about in the beginning, when you're prepping, you what kind of content you need? Do you need video? Do you need infographics? Do you need tables? All these questions. Do you need experts to comment? The reason you answer all those questions is so when you get here, you basically can create that content and all the assets easily. It's easy to find. Again, if you're outsourcing to a writer or your content writer in-house is writing it, they know where to check. Then after that point before you do any outreach. I cannot stress this enough, before you do any outreach, you need to answer the questions I have here just checked off.
Tamara:
Is that data readily accessible? Is it? Can you share it very quickly? This is even not just within the blog post, but outside of the blog post. Can it be shared? Because if you want to get the link, typically we use what we want or you want to get mentioned, anything. The journalists will want to sink their teeth into this. You need to be able to share it quickly and easily. Are the best data visuals in the content, right? Whatever data visuals you thought you were going to do, or what other visuals you thought like video again, infographics, whatever that is. Are the best ones in the content you created? Are they telling the best story? Just because it's a cool looking graphic does not mean it's the best. The best means they have to tell the story, still. Support what's happening in the content. Just ask yourself that question, just to double check.
Tamara:
Are there experts or customers available to comment? It doesn't have to be just those two, but sometimes I've seen this happen where journalists love the chart. They love the story, but they want someone else to comment. You can actually get a link from a comment too, surprisingly. Everyone thinks it's the data, but it can be both. It can be one or the other or both. Are you able to contact that person? I have a rule. You have 30 minutes when a journalist reaches out to you to really pick up speed and get everything rolling. That's just my personal rule because they have tight deadlines. It's happened to me multiple times where a journalist has reached out after two weeks, I haven't heard from them. They're like, "Hey, I have a deadline at 1:00 PM. Can you get someone to comment on this now?"
Tamara:
I'm like, "Oh, okay." Just an experience. Just be prepared because when that happens or if it happens, which is a good situation, then you can react very quickly and still get a win for your brand or the client you're working with. Having their numbers, knowing what their expertise is in, knowing if they're willing to comment. Do they want to be quoted? Do they want to be quoted anonymously? All these things you should be aware of before you pitch, so that if it happens, you are ready. Then what I always say is are all these assets stored in a shareable Google Drive folder? Now Google Drive is my preference. Dropbox, or any other tool that you may want to use is fine. The point is, if you put it in a folder and the journalist follows up and says, "Hey, I want to learn more."
Tamara:
It's a link. You just put a link. It's just one thing you have to do and say, "Hey, here's a bullet point. Everything included in here. You're good to go. I want to help you make the story as great as possible for your audience. Let me know how else I can help." You have to remember that outreach is all about helping that journalist tell the story and being a value add to them. Yes, we're doing it for the brands and the clients that we work with. By the end of the day, we're also really at the mercy of the journalist at the end of the day. Easy, accessible, can they get to it? Can you help them? Those are all things you want to be doing. These four questions are just really important when it comes to again, creating content. You also want to have all these other assets ready to go and prepared.
Tamara:
Here are some examples. Again, using Stacker here. When we're talking about student loans, this is one of the charts that we had. This was within the actual content, but it could also be pulled out and just shared with the journalists immediately. Then we have this other story that we actually dropped recently about layoff estimate, touchy subject right now in the economy. Again, there was two charts in that actual content and again, very easy to share with a journalist and say like, "Here's where we got the data. You can use this." Again, you already had the attribution there. These are so many different things that go into this one piece of data, but the point is, it's ready to go, easily accessible. Then also just to point this out, I mentioned this earlier really briefly. Sometimes if you have old content too, and you want to create a campaign around it, sometimes updating it and making it just more accurate to recent news.
Tamara:
Again, as Queen Elizabeth passing away can also help too. This is just one of those things where you don't always have to create content from scratch necessarily. Part of creating the content, again, in quotations is also maybe updating something that's old that you already created and now you see, "Oh my gosh. The news makes this super relevant. Let me go back and make sure I have all my ducks in a row in that piece of content and just repurpose it again." Just wanted to also make that call, that creating content doesn't just have to be from scratch.
Tamara:
Well the last step... I have a few friends in the industry who probably are so happy. I'm stressing this, but this is the outrage step. At this point, it is all about quality over quantity. You can do the quantity game if you want to, but I don't suggest it, simply because journalists have a lot going on. That's whether they're in traditional trade bloggers, no matter what it is, they have a lot going on and you want to stand out. You don't want to end up on the block list, which if you really want to understand that if that happens... People don't believe that that happens. Go to #PR fails. You'll see how journalists talk about anyone who pitches them. They usually blame it on PR people, but that's fine. Just go #PR wins on Twitter and you'll see exactly what I'm saying here, where you do not want to end up on the block list. You don't want them to be irritated with you. Again, you want to get them to notice you in a positive way.
Tamara:
If you're representing multiple clients at an agency, I always say this too. You really don't want to end up on the block list because you're not just representing one client. You're representing multiple people. If you do something wrong or did I say wrong? If you make a mistake or end up in the PR fail section in a journalist inbox for one client, and you're an agency, you're actually ending up blocking multiple clients. This is why I also stress this for agencies because it's your one email. Anyone from that email, they're just over it. Travis, your face is like, "What?" I'm just saying it happens. It's not a fun thing. It happens. Just pointing this out. This is my core reason for loving this because I'm usually in a position where I have to represent multiple clients.
Tamara:
It's really important for me not to get blocked because I want to give every client opportunity. I have more agency experience, but that's just me. Also, it's all about working smarter, not harder. There's that, which now that I say that, here this says, your goal is to contact the right journalist. We keep using this word, right. Again, what does right mean? The journalist that covers the topic you want them to... Your contents about that reaches the audience you want to reach, right? That's what right means. Whether it's a media contact. This is digital PR so we're not really diving into if you want to be on TV, et cetera, but you want to contact the right person. Again, this is my personal motto, work smarter, not harder. If we go back to the agency example, you don't end up on a block list. This journalist likes you for this one client. Maybe they can introduce you to another peer who covered a different topic for another client.
Tamara:
Now you have your foot's in the door and they know that you're really great to work with, and you're not going to waste their time. Or you generate what I call, not traction from coverage, but traction from the actual journalist, meaning that journalist will always come back to you and say, "Hey, I liked this client for this topic or article that I wrote. Hey, do you have other clients that can comment on something else coming up that I'm writing?" Like goldmine, because now you don't have to even do any outreach. It's inbound, it's coming to you. You end up building long-term relationships and providing value consistently and they just keep coming back. That is the goldmine in digital PR or even traditional PR. That's why it's important to work smarter, not harder as well. Just other reasons.
Tamara:
How do you even do this, right? This is what we call targeted outreach. It's outreach, but it's targeted. First thing first, you want to find the right person. Again, if you don't believe me or you're like, "I just want to verify what Tamara's saying." Feel free to do it. Please go on Twitter and just look up PR fails. The amount of times a day, a week that you see journalists say, "I'm getting pitches for stuff that I don't even write about." How angry and upsetting it makes them is insane. I also have people I've worked with who were like, "I have thousands of email in my inbox." I think the last one told me 50,000 or more in their inbox. That is not going to get you noticed if they already can tell just from the subject line and the little preview words that this is not what they want to talk about. To the trash you go, like that. They don't have time for that.
Tamara:
Travis, we were talking earlier, there have so many responsibilities. Journalists have to make sure their stuff gets run on social media. They have so many pieces of content they have to create. Let's not add to their burden. Let's be great collaborators is how I think about it. One small thing you can do is just check to see what did they actually write about? Basically their beat. What did they cover? How frequently do they post? Are they posting once a year? Maybe not the best person to reach out to. Was their last post two years ago, not the best person to reach out to right now about that topic. These are just things to consider. A big one too and I've learned this by trial and error myself.
Tamara:
I'm not saying that we all get this correct out of the gate, but do they link to external content or experts? A lot of times journalists do have editorial rules they have to go by. Even at the end of the day, they might hand it to their editor and stuff gets cut out. Or the editor is like, "No, we don't do links." There's some sites who don't do backlinks. It's like period, point blank. They do internal linking to their stuff, but they don't do backlink.
Tamara:
It's just important to know that. Again, don't end up on a block list. Don't end up in the trash. Just try to do your research on that website to figure out, do they actually link to third-party data? Do they link to surveys? What do they do? Why did they link to that survey or data? Why would I be a good fit to convince them to put my client or my brand in their content? Again, you're thinking about how you can help them. What else can I learn about them using Google, Twitter or immediate database? I have some examples here that I'll show you in a second, but for the most part, just do your research and we can... I know I have some time to consider. I'll just go to the next slide here. If you really want to understand who's the best to reach, here's a trick that I always use on Google. The topic, so in this case I did student debt and inflation before certain year and date. I typically try to do six months because that's the most, most recent. Journalists change their jobs a lot.
Tamara:
Sometimes the editors put them on different beats. Try to be as recent as possible, really helps and just minimizes the amount of risk in contacting the wrong person. Just an FYI. Again, the same search parameters, year, month, date. You can do that anytime. I'm not saying you need to go through 328,000 results. It just helps you narrow down who you should reach out to and who's the best person to contact for that particular story that you might be thinking about.
Tamara:
Also, use a media database. Like I mentioned earlier to verify information. This is not every single journalist on the planet, but you would be surprised and I'm using Muck Rack. This is actually Muck Rack's screenshot. You can use Muck Rack for free as well. Again, paying for is absolutely worth it. Again, it depends on your brand or your agency and the investment they want to put into a tool like Muck Rack I would say. Here's an example of someone I did pitch and the name isn't really that important. I really want you to look at the contact preferences. I prefer pitches via email in the afternoon between 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM. Well, how do you know the time zone? You go here and look at where they're located. That's just, plug that together. I do not respond if I'm not going to cover the story you pitched me.
Tamara:
What does that mean? If you follow up twice, she's not responding. Period. Okay. You know to move on to the next person. That again, helps you be more efficient with your time, but you also know, I want to send that pitch between 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM her time. If you use a tool like BuzzStream, you can actually schedule this time in the emails, or if you have Google, you can just schedule it from there and make sure it's sent in that time frame for this particular journalist. These are just things you want to point out and again, help you be successful.
Tamara:
Also, if you're using Muck Rack, they do usually give you all the emails that you can use. Journalists do have this and don't blame them for actually this requirement. Sometimes they prefer to get pitches at very specific emails. They don't want them in their personal inbox. It's seen as a violation of their privacy. Just knowing those types of things really helps you stand out from the inbox. Also, I want to point out pronouns are also really important. Knowing how to refer to them is huge. Knowing their first name is huge. These are all things that before you send an email, just having all these lined up in a row, maybe in a spreadsheet, they just help you stand out in these crazy inboxes, when you have to pitch.
Tamara:
Again, just how to do this? You want to pitch for value and focus on the why and the what. Why is this story important? Now, what makes this unique, interesting, unusual. I should have put why here. I'm so sorry. It's typo. Why should anyone care about this story? Especially to the journalist and their readers. Again, we want our brands and our clients to get the link, to get mentioned, to get the coverage. At the end of the day, it's really not about us. That's the part that I know it's a challenge, but it's really about that journalist telling a story that, again, gets them traction with their readers and builds that trust for them too. If you can figure out how to be that bridge all the time, then the brand you represent or the clients you work with will always end up getting the link or the mention. It's just, you have to figure that out. It's not always about you. It's about them in this case.
Tamara:
I just wanted to drop this in here. Take a screenshot, write it down, whatever you need. I've shared this with Semrush audience before, just a simple pitch template to follow. Just have a sub... Not the subject. Don't put subject there. Be specific and clear and highlight your story. I could go into multiple chats about what's the ideal subject word length, but honestly, if it's clear and it tells a story. Again, if we're talking about an inbox has 50,000 emails, you stand out. Be specific. Always try to do hi plus a journalist first name. It's just a personalized touch. Now please do not put the field that says, insert first name here. Don't do that because then they automatically feel like you're just scamming them. Please don't do that. Make sure it's spelled right. Again, this sounds like we're talking about going back to school, but that just makes someone feel appreciated and that you're actually talking to them and not random people. The body of the email, personalized crafted story and add a call to action.
Tamara:
When I say personalized, find something to connect with them with. Maybe they talked about this topic six months ago in an article in their portfolio. Link to it. Let them know that you actually read the story. Point at something interesting that they covered and how you think you can help. Craft the story. Be very clear about what you're offering. I sometimes have to remember to do this multiple times, but be clear of what you're offering. Be clear about what story you're trying to tell again, back to that, and a call to action. Hey, reach out to me if you're interested. Reach out to me in the next two weeks before the story drops. Reach out to me to talk to this expert. Be clear. What is the actual ask? Then signature wise, now this seems really silly, but they want to know your name. They want to know where you work. Include your pronouns too, just because we in the media and PR we all care about that.
Tamara:
Then a big thing is include your email address or include your phone number if you're willing to take calls or text messages. That's important. I've had reporters not even respond to my email, but called me immediately. Just an FYI. Then always follow-up. This is about professional persistence, not annoying persistence. This is key. Some best practices. After 48 hours is always a good time. Just give them some time to even see the email, just some time. Keep it simple, so you can say any interest or, "Hey, I'm checking back in to see if you saw." You repeat something that would catch your attention and what really, really helps if you add an additional timely detail. Let's say I was pitching that Queen Elizabeth's story like, "Hey, she passed away." That's an obvious thing, but, "Hey, she passed away and I'm just checking in to see if you saw my email about the queen passing away. We actually have an extensive list about who's in succession next." Just jog their memory a little bit.
Tamara:
I'm going to run through this really quick because I know we're short on time here. Just an example of just results that we've gotten at Stacker specifically. I just want to preface it with the fact that Stacker, we are a newswire and a media company at first, but we also partner with brands. Some of these, we do have a unique advantage because we have a very extensive distribution network that we pitch to and that we work with. They get to make their choice on these things. I just want to put that disclaimer out there for this example, but the client here is Sunday Citizen. We did eight stories for them just based on all of these methods I was talking about. We did a tangential content strategy with a wellness focus. That meant sleep, self-care, stuff like that.
Tamara:
This is just one of the story examples. How stress affects the way American sleep. From that, we got more than 1,000 total pickups of that story. The client got 500 plus new referring domains just anecdotally. It helped our keyword rankings 15 times. Again, this case study actually does exist on our site stacker.studio.com. You can always go and check it out and see some other case studies too. I just wanted to pull one out just to share an example and that's it.
Travis:
Awesome. Great job. That was very useful. We do have a couple questions and I know we're running tight on time. Sue asks, "I'm assuming digital PR tactics will have to be modified depending on the industry. Do you have any specific tips for B2B or direct to consumer?
Tamara:
Yeah, B2B I have done. It's really the same thing. B2B, for example, you might want to focus at your content, your tactics and what you do on more trade media, to be honest, just because they tend to be talking to experts your language needs to be more expertise focused. I always use the example of if I was doing IEP consulting, which I don't know if anyone knows what that is? It has to do with education and helping children do better in school. If I was talking to other IEP consultants, I could use that terminology, that phrase. I would probably go for more education magazines, like industry dives or education dive, that kind of thing. I wouldn't necessarily go to... I can't really use New York Times just because they cover a lot, but I wouldn't really go to a more consumer friendly website.
Tamara:
That's how it changes. Your language will change. Maybe even the infographics or the data you use will be more intense than it would be for consumer. How you say numbers. How you write the content, the language you use. That's why that target audience is so important is because it could change... That person's right. Sorry. If you're doing B2B, it changes completely. Direct-to-consumer has multiple tactics you can use those influence our marketing, there's affiliate. There's so many things, even a digital PR strategy you can use. Again, if you don't know who your audience is, just find the tactics that match that, and you'll be good to go. That's a short version.
Travis:
Awesome. Thanks for that. We have a question from anonymous, it says, "Do you have any advice for publishers and doing digital PR? Specifically, do publishers have the ability to do digital PR if they are technically press themselves?
Tamara:
You can. It's a little different. Basically you might have the advantage if you're a publisher of doing... You have maybe a newsroom or people who are expert journalists themselves, that you can ideate better with and know how to find data a little bit differently than just someone who's at a brand or an agency who does multiple other things. It's really the same concept. The steps still make sense. You just have to get more buy-in when you're a publisher, because you might have your own editorial calendar. This has been working for you, and this is just a different angle that you're throwing into the pie. You just have to get more buy-in, get people to like, "What kind of content can we create?" Okay, is this unique, interesting. In Stacker's case, will it work for the network that we're working with, like that network we talked about? Who would we like to actually reach out to? Is it better for this to go to TV? Do we want to go that route? Do we care if we get a backlink or not? Especially with publishers, do you have experts on tap. On tap meaning ready? That can actually get you more mentions really quickly. That's what I would say.
Travis:
Awesome. Next question. What is the preferred platform you use for outreach?
Tamara:
Ooh, I've used a lot. This is the hard one. Personally, I'm a Muck Rack fan, just saying, because Muck Rack has everything. It has the media database. It has the reporting. You can actually track your emails and create multiple lists and it's unlimited. I would say it's an investment and I'm using that like it's not monthly. You're committed to this contract with Muck Rack. You can at least do everything for unlimited clients in that one space. That's why I love it myself. Also, the reports are very exportable. It's really good. You can actually white label them and share them with your clients. They have dashboards. They have coverage reports and you can also automate a lot of reporting too. That's why I prefer Mack Rack.
Tamara:
Some other tools that I have used like Prowly. It's a good one. It's Semrush company. I actually currently use that one. Really good tool to use. BuzzStream is also really good to use as well. It's really good if you want to track backlinks and you want to track them specifically to your campaign that you're doing. It's really good. The reporting though is just better for if you're trying to show your boss, your manager, VPs. It's not really great to show clients. There's an extra step there, but again, those are my three suggestions as of today.
Travis:
Awesome. Appreciate that. I think we have time for one more question, unless you have to run. Do you use an alert tool like Google Alerts or something for inbound?
Tamara:
Yes. Reporting is my favorite part about this process. I didn't touch here, but it's my favorite part. Yes. Google Alerts are great, but they're not my favorite. Talkwalker is a free tool. You can actually set up just like you would do any like Boolean searches in Google. You can set them up in Talkwalker, it's free. It automatically asks you the frequency you want, and it will get everything, not just what ranks on Google. It will get everything and it can actually just email you and just automatically send it to you. You can also use alerts in Prowly as well, actually. Then if you're in Muck Rack you can do the same thing. The difference is with Muck Rack and Prowly that it will automatically go to report if you set it up. I'm a person that I like to make my life as less challenging as possible.
Tamara:
I use a combination of all three in my career. Love Talkwalker, it picks up the things that not every software picks up. I would say, please use that, it's free. Can't go wrong. With Prowly and Muck Rack, just set up what you're looking for and then automatically send it to report, so you also can see it in a report form. That's like a little bit more user friendly for a client and you just save yourself time.
