Nowadays, technology dominates our daily life as well as working routine. The constant presence of an internet connection and of a mobile device interests all markets and businesses. Companies and privates work every day in order to better manage and communicate their online image. What does it means? Is there any other reality out of the online one?
Of course, we cannot forget the offline dimension even if the online one is that where most of the world’s facts happens: we chat with our friends, we ask for information, we evaluate products and services, we go shopping, we book our next holidays. All these actions we once did in the real world, today we do them on the web.
We spend most of our time online and this is the reason why companies invest so much in digital PR and online communication. Thanks to digital technologies, it is easier to reach a larger number of users and to communicate faster with them. Surely, this is a positive aspect of how technology has affected online communication.
Digital PR strategies and new technologies
Public relations before the advent of the Internet were almost carried out offline. PR managers’ working tools were paper, pen and telephone. A public relations strategy before the Internet was based exclusively on the offline communication.
The most important innovation brought by new technologies concerns the possibility of using several communication channels. Therefore, digital PR strategies are more articulated and complex.
Bloggers and influencers in digital PR strategies
Once, the only interlocutors of the PR manager were the journalists or the other PR managers. Nowadays, the audience is broader. Bloggers and influencers are two new figures that digital PR agencies increasingly include in online communication strategies.
They usually are common persons who gained a certain popularity and a certain number of followers thanks to the new technologies, such as social medias. They are specialized in a specific sector and they talk to a niche of customers. Therefore, they are a reference point for people interested in a specific topic.
Thanks to bloggers and influencers, companies communicate their values and reach a more profiled target of users who are really interested in their products or services.
Faster relations with journalists
Moreover relations with journalists are increasingly simple and fast, thanks to new technologies.
Once, the press release had to be issued by classic mail in a very short time. Nowadays, digital PR managers take to digital press releases so that relations and communications are faster and easier. It is possible to send a press release to a list of hundreds of journalists and press agencies who are potentially interested, with just one click.
SEO and online brand reputation
Digital PRs today have a lot to do both with online reputation and SEO.
The digital PR manager also takes care of making sure that everyone online talk about a certain company or a certain product. How to do so?
For example, the PR supervisor selects magazines, blogs, online newspapers and other editorial sites where the so-called guest posts appear. Guest posts are news and articles dedicated to a company, a product or a service. What distinguishes them from a classic news or article is the presence of a backlink to the company’s website.
It is a paid advertising technique, useful for SEO activities as it helps a website to gain popularity in the search engine. Google, for example, rewards sites with many quality backlinks making them more visible to users when they do an online search.
This activity is also part of modern digital PR tasks and it is an evolution of the role of the PR manager in the era of the digital technologies.