Digital PR is a combination of traditional PR, social media, content marketing and search engine optimization. It's PR backed by technology. Digital PR can discover share of voice, brand affinities, opportunities and potential threats and utilize these insights to create an effective content strategy that builds a loyal and engaged audience - it delivers the right message to the right audience in the right place at the right time.

Digital PR and Social Media are often thought of as the same thing, but is it so much more than social media.  Just as media relations is a big part of PR, but not the entirety of the discipline, so too with social media and Digital PR.PR, whether  done offline or online, is about building awareness, credibility and goodwill.  It’s about establishing a presence and gaining the understanding and support of your stakeholders.PR has always been about creating a favorable operating climate for a company or organization.  Digital PR is no different - it just uses the latest technology to accomplish the goals of PR.

Digital PR is about understanding the digital landscape you operate in and developing strong relationships with all the players in your social graph.  distribution and amplification, as well as social media, online newsrooms, websites, blogs and online media relations, metrics and analytics.

Online Reputation

Social media and consumer generated content can have a rapid effect on your reputation – both positive and negative.  Understanding SEO (search engine optimization) is not just a vital skill for PR practitioners today – it’s crucial.Should an online crisis hit your business the event itself will be bad enough, but the aftermath of the negative content online can extend the effect of the crisis well into the future.  Every time someone does a search for your company’s name that pesky negative content will show up.  Search engines index content on relevance.  If you don’t understand how the search algorithms work and how to move that content down the rankings, it will linger like a bad fish smell.

Building relationships

Digital PR makes use of social media platforms, networks and tools to interact with people online and build relationships. The social media part is the content and conversations on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube.  The Digital PR part is the support functions needed to make those conversations relevant and effective – research, social audits, identifying influencers, developing and distributing the content.

Visual Content

The demand for visual content is growing rapidly and is set to continue into the future.  Part of Digital PR today is adding visual content to the PR mix – images, videos, infographics. These are new skills for most PR folk, even recent graduates. Few schools are including visual content production and distribution in their curriculum. You need to know how to use your phone and your tablet to take great photos, make interesting images and produce quick videos that enhance a news story.

Monitor and Measure

Another new area for PR people is measurement. We’re not used to monitoring conversations and tracking everything.  In the digital world it is possible to track everything and there are many affordable tools you can use:

• Google Analytics (Read SAMS Teach yourself Google Analytics in 10 minutes and Avinash Kaushik’s blog)

• Facebook Insights

• YouTube insights

• Twitter Counter

• FollowerWonk

• CrowdBooster

• NetVibes Dashboard

Digital PR is not so different from traditional PR – the goal is to create an online presence that correctly reflects who we are, what we stand for and what we do.  It's about use technology to reach and build relationships with our stakeholders so we can develop and foster that  favorable operating climate.  We use a number of techniques to achieve that.  Social Media is one them.If you have not yet mastered the new skills needed to excel in Digital PR,  take the 15 Digital Skills course - it's free.If you’re looking for an agency to help you, make sure they are experienced in Digital PR, not just traditional PR.  A good digital PR Agency will be skilled in all these areas.

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