If you want to become seen as an expert in your niche and to truly dominate your competitors in your sector, Digital PR becomes a key factor.

What is Digital PR?

Perhaps it is best to take one step back and ask what is PR, or to give it its full name, Public Relations.

In its simplest description, PR is spreading to the world at large what your business is about, who you serve and how you are different so that people understand why they should buy from you.

Digital PR, therefore, is doing the same thing online.

Whilst PR can be an incredibly expensive service to buy, there are a lot of elements of Digital PR that you can achieve on your own.

Let us look at these.

1. Being Seen As The Expert

If you really want to dominate your competition, you have to be seen as an expert in your field.

How can you do this online?

Write relentlessly about your topic of expertise just like Nick Jervis, a former solicitor who since 2003 has been providing legal marketing services.

You should be adding unique, well-searched and long-form content to your website, that proves without any shadow of a doubt that you are an expert in your niche.

Remember what you are trying to achieve here; to spread your message to the world at large that you are an expert in your niche.

If someone visits your website and finds only one or two blog posts, how can they even begin to believe that you are an expert?

They simply can’t, can they?

However, if they visit your website and find, in time, hundreds of articles about your topic of expertise, their only conclusion has to be that you are an expert.

The additional benefit of this consistent approach to blogging is that your website will be found many more times not only by Google but also by your potential clients.

Win, win!

2. Being Found As The Expert

Not only will your prospects keep finding your website, but also journalists will do so when looking for help and opinions on newsworthy items relating to your area of expertise.

Who is a journalist more likely to first of all find, then secondly get in touch with to ask for a comment:

1. Someone who has a very small website with very little content; or
2. Someone who has a huge website with dozens of articles, insights and opinions on the very topic that the journalist is researching.

It is the second option, and that option can get you quoted online on media websites several times each year as the expert in your niche.

What’s more, as these media websites are usually very well respected in the search engines’ eyes, references to you and even links to your own website will boost your positions in the search engines.

This will result in higher organic search engine rankings and more visitors to your website. Another win from Digital PR.

3. Reaching Out To The Media

Now that you have seen how powerful Digital PR can be for your business and created content that proves your expertise in this area, you can reach out to the relevant media and offer to provide content for their publication.

A simple strategy to adopt for this Digital PR campaign is to list all of the publications that cover your area of expertise, head to their websites and find the key writers, then connect with them on LinkedIn.

Once connected, you can adopt the following approach:

1. Follow all of their posts. From time to time they will ask for help on a particular topic. If you can add a comment, get in touch with them quickly providing a strong “soundbite” (your opinion on the topic that will stand out from the mundane) that ensures they open your message and get in touch with you.

2. Ensure that you add posts to LinkedIn commenting on any topical issues in your niche. They will see these comments in their LinkedIn feed. Approach them directly when you have an idea for a topic that you know could be very newsworthy. Don’t pester them, only contact them when you have a really strong topic to discuss.

In Conclusion

Digital PR can be an incredibly powerful and cost-effective way to get more people talking about you and your business and getting more people to visit your website.

Are you using Digital PR? If not, add it to your marketing mix as soon as possible.