Successful digital PR combines creativity and strategy, engages bloggers and influencers, and prevents online crises. The importance of online reputation has grown considerably in recent years.

Digital PR allows you to create a relationship between the brand and users in order to generate word of mouth, or WOMM (Word-Of-Mouth Marketing). Every brand that wants visibility on the web should get inside the conversations to discover the opinions of millions of users.

 

How to do digital public relations

Nowadays, web users have the ability to express their opinion about a brand, product or service.

Intercepting these online conversations and taking part in them is the first step for any company aiming for a qualitative web presence.

Interacting with these virtual communities also means observing precise relational rules with participating users.

First, you need to generate word of mouth (WOMM), which is a process of natural exchange of information regarding the brand. Word of mouth is triggered on unofficial sites, such as blogs, forums and communities.

In these spaces, the so-called “seeding” takes place: you address specific blogs or communities, contact specific influencers and opinion leaders to inform them and make them participate in your activity, with the aim of involving influential and authoritative people on a certain topic, so as to increase your credibility on the web.

Influencers are true opinion leaders, people who have a large following and esteem on the web and who are able to influence the behaviour of their followers.

They are vital for the viral propagation of information and content, as they have a great grip on communities by influencing their decision-making processes. There are a number of ways to track and contact influencers:

• Google Alert tells us by whom, how and when content of interest to us is being discussed on the web
• The verification of hashtags that index topics on various social networks
• The KLOUT check, i.e. the reputation index. This is measured by the amount of interactions on the various social networks and ranges between 1 and 100. The higher this number, the more authoritative the person is.

Digital public relations activities always start with a listening phase.

The first step is monitoring the various channels to understand who is talking, where, and at what time.

After organising the listening phase, we move on to the content development phase, the content strategy. As with any content offered on the web, in Digital PR you need to create interesting and engaging content that creates curiosity and engagement.

The content strategy has the specific objective of creating interaction in order to trigger word of mouth. Closing the process involves processing and analysing the results.

The data collected through digital public relations can be monitored both quantitatively and qualitatively through a few parameters: number of posts and articles that have talked about our brand, number of mentions of the brand, shares, comments, likes of a post, traffic data/visits to posts, number of people reached with the campaign.

Digital public relations affect our web reputation, influence opinion leaders and create public opinion movements, influencing user sentiments and inclinations. They help us increase visibility and create emotional connection with consumers.

Digital PR has enormous potential but its use is only effective in specific areas, to the exclusion of others. Opinions can be steered and influenced, but you can’t force an idea into the heads of millions of people, especially on the web, which deals with such a liquid and elusive subject.

To achieve and maintain online visibility and credibility, it is a good idea to integrate digital PR into a broad, structured communications strategy that includes the use of several integrated platforms.

1Stop Translations is the ideal partner for your digital public relations activities. Contact us for more information.