You Can’t Sit With Us: The Rise in Popularity of Digital PR

Hands up PRs, if you’ve personally been victimised by Regina George the digital marketing industry?

When I started in this industry in 2012, Digital PR was the hacky sidekick to SEO, looked down upon at times by even almighty Google. Today, though still underestimated by some, Digital PR has flourished into a multifaceted superpower, able to boost organic positions and brand authority across any industry.

On Wednesdays, we build links

Digital PR started off with link building: buying, begging and quite frankly bribing companies and blogs for links.

There was no real strategy for most link builders, as there were no relevancy guidelines, so links were anywhere and everywhere. Buying links in bulk was common practice, but inorganically building links in this way was seen as spammy, and resulted in some seismic Google updates in the 2010s.

In short, the link builders were the spammy side kick in the digital marketing story, and very far from the popular kid at the lunch table.

That’s why her hair is so big, it’s full of relevant content

Fast forward in time, and media publications started to have more of a presence online, and Google started to share guidelines on the types of links it would credit as beneficial.

Marketing teams started to invest more heavily in digital, and recognised the collaboration between traditional PR and link building tactics.

Hence, link builders morphed into digital public relation specialists, moving from sending spam emails to sending thought provoking, relevant content to journalists, both building links and brand awareness in one go.

Get in loser, we’re going to boost organic results and brand awareness

Although Digital PR very much still involves link building, it has transcended and morphed beyond this to encompass many facets of marketing and PR. We are slowly losing our now false reputation as a “soft” or “spammy” service, and more as a powerful way to boost organic results as well as brand awareness across national B2C and B2B audiences in any sector.

In 2024, Google values brand mentions across the web as well as links, showing the true value of digital PR in its current form.

Busier than ever, journalist need PRs to help bring their stories to life and drive engagement across online publications and social. Bringing genuine expertise and data to the media, PRs bridge the gap between business and journalism, serving the general public with interesting and helpful content, as well as improving the business’ bottom line.

The limit does not exist

There are now so many different ways a business can successfully utilise Digital PR in 2024.

From expert-led to data-led strategies, from reactive to thought leadership, the power of PR is thus that it can work in any industry, from niche trades to eCommerce sites which are household names.

Digital PR strategies are able to scale up and down depending on the size of business, match and work alongside the business’ current marketing and social calendar, and create bespoke multi-faceted strategies for different activation, audiences and aims.

The limit does not exist when it comes to the true power of digital PR.

I don’t know about you, but I think Digital PR is so fetch.