Content Planning For Digital PR

When it comes to planning a digital PR campaign, it’s fair to say that there is lots to consider, and making sure that you get a good ROI is essential.

An effective digital PR campaign will see a higher flow of traffic to your website and boost your online presence creating greater admiration for and trust in your brand.

At the core of any excellent digital PR campaign is fantastic, optimized, targeted content. So how do you go about planning this to ensure your campaign is a success? Here are the different stages:

Idea generation

At the very beginning, you need to come up with ideas. Getting your team together to brainstorm is an essential first step. Let everyone pitch in and put down anything that comes to mind. Discuss the different type of content in your niche, whether you can hook on to any other events, trends or news stories that could make your content more current and relevant or any dates, data, or pieces of interesting information that could lend themselves well to a piece of content for your intended audience. By the end of the session, you should have a list of themes and ideas that you feel confident will work for your campaigns.

Scrutinize your list

Once you have a good list of ideas, you want to start breaking them down and researching them more thoroughly. Get feedback and consider your customer – why would they want to read about this? How likely are they to engage with this kind of content? How could you provide a unique angle or something valuable? How will you make your content entertaining and useful?

Create a distribution plan

Creating great content is one thing, but figuring out what to do with it is equally important, and this is where your distribution plan comes in. Having clearly defined goals will help inform your distribution plan, and here you need to decide on which platforms you plan to publish your content, how you will promote it and when it will be timely and more relevant to release each piece of content. Research your target niches, for example, the different audiences you hope will be interested in your content. Are you hoping to get it picked up by the press? Are you hoping it will appeal to bloggers or vloggers? Make a list of people you hope will engage with your content to help understand who you need to distribute it to and the best platforms to do so.

Plan your launch

Planning your launch requires some smart planning and strategic thinking. Linking to awareness days can be helpful as you can piggyback on a much larger event. You could also plan around a new trend that everyone is talking about.

However, it is also essential to be aware of big unrelated stories that could swamp yours and mean it gets lost or overlooked. Sometimes it is best to wait, even if you are excited to share what you have been working on with the world.

Once you have figured out the best time to launch, you need to pitch your content to all those relevant contacts that you hope will want to publish and share it. Writing a quality pitch is also essential. Not only should your pitch be personalized and carefully curated, but it should also be sent at the right time. Think about when you would be most receptive to receiving a pitch – and remember it can be different for different people.

Follow up if you need to. If you aren’t getting the response you hoped, you can write a follow-up email to politely inquire whether your contact received your pitch and if they are considering it. Follow-ups should be carefully considered though as you don’t want to come across as presumptuous, impolite, or pushy.

Planning content for digital PR takes time and practice, but focusing your energy on creating content that is valuable, unique and exciting will mean it is more likely to be picked up and published by those that have the most influence. So follow the tips above to plan your content for digital PR and enjoy greater success in your campaigns.