Digital PR Agency that focuses on tangible performance metrics

FAQs about our Digital PR Service

• What is Digital PR?

  It’s easy to confuse Digital PR with simple ‘link building’ because this is (arguably) where it originated from. But today, it’s so much more than ‘link building’ - it’s ‘awareness building’, and not just building the awareness of your website, but for your brand and what you specialise in.

  Digital PR is a combination of strategic content marketing and finding unique news angles or hooks that will result in press coverage and increase your brand footprint online. We put stories out to press that our brands have the authority and expertise to speak on, without directly selling their products or services. Success can also be achieved through social media and influencer marketing.

  No matter how large your organisation is, Digital PR is a critical part of any marketing strategy in that it helps build brand awareness whilst at a more technical level supports SEO by signalling to Google your Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust on a certain topic (E-E-A-T).

• What’s the difference between Traditional PR and Digital PR?

  The difference between Traditional PR and Digital PR is that we focus on purely improving your online presence, and most importantly it is measurable.

  The SEO strategy is at the foundations of our planning, which is based on identifying keyword opportunities and using these as an anchor for our ideas and content.

  All of our stories promote our clients’ brands as experienced experts, with the authority to speak on their niche, that are worthy of the consumers (and Google’s!) trust (E-E-A-T).

• Why is Digital PR Important?

  When done correctly, Digital PR is about creating interesting and/or entertaining content and new stories that are compatible with your brand and working with journalists from authoritative and relevant media outlets to achieve organic placements. 

  As long as all other elements on your site are technically sound, the output from Digital PR has a dual impact. It will strengthen your website by building links that will contribute to improved rankings, increased traffic and sales, whilst helping you to build your brand presence and get you seen by the right people in the right places which will improve conversion rates over the long term.

• Which Digital PR Services does Honcho provide?

  We have several approaches to Digital PR, which include:

  1. Hero campaigns. These proactive, large-scale creative pieces enable us to be more planful and targeted in our messaging and tend to deliver a high volume of links, coverage and views from strategic targets. To achieve this we carry out research on the brand, your competitors and get an understanding of what’s happening in your industry right now so that we’re able to come up with a series of hero campaign ideas. Although these campaigns can take time and resource to produce, they are often worth the investment since the best ones are filled with reams of different angles and stories, as well as being evergreen, allowing us to recycle and repurpose the content throughout the year. They can also be remodelled to fit across multiple channels enabling us to reach the widest audience possible. Hero campaigns can be executed in a range of formats from simple blog posts supported with stunning data visualisations, to interactives, to video and beyond. It really depends on what the idea is and we work hard to ensure we’re picking the best format that suits the content to allow our information to be as easy to digest for your target audience.
  2. Reactive Campaigns. This is where we set up alerts and monitor the media so that we’re quickly ready to jump on any current news stories that are relevant to the brand. We put our clients at the heart of these existing conversations by providing journalists with expert commentary, additional information or unique and relevant data insights. Reactive PR is a hugely popular approach for Digital PR practitioners so the most important factor here, beyond topical relevancy, is speed. We see it as adding to and enhancing the newscycle as quickly as we can…before your competitors do!
  3. Quick Wins. What we want is a consistent flow of coverage and links, so we recommend clients take an always-on approach. This is where you can be sure to receive links and brand mentions throughout the year, rather than seeing peaks and troughs through relying on an approach focused purely on Hero Campaigns. One of the ways we do that is by finding reactive opportunities, however, we can’t predict how many, if any of those opportunities will arise, so we like to have some Quick Wins in our back pocket ready to go out with. To achieve this we would look to work with any existing content from your site which could provide us with additional outreach potential. This content often comes in the form of existing blogs or articles packed with hints, tips and answers to common FAQ’s. This kind of content often results in coverage, so it’s just about us ensuring the copy and angles are fresh and timely so that we get into these stories ahead of the competition.
  4. Link Reclamation. Considered by many as the slightly less exciting side of Digital PR, however, Link Reclamation is a really valuable tactic which we could get going on from day one as part of our ‘always-on’ approach. In this case we work to identify opportunities to claim a link in existing articles (rather than adding to, or creating new news stories). We look for Link Reclamation opportunities in the following areas:

  • updating existing backlinks to any error pages
  • reinstating lost backlinks overtime
  • converting unlinked mentions to backlinks
  • identifying and earning lost backlinks or links to error pages on competitor websites

• What is the standard contract length?

  We prefer to work with 12-month contracts, however, we are open to 3-month trials in the first instance to prove the value of our services.

• Will I be assigned an Account Manager?

  Each client has a dedicated Account Manager as the main point of contact and this will be an expert working directly on your account.

  Your Account Manager immerses themselves in the running of the account, leading strategy & optimisation, and driving your activity to hit your KPIs. They will keep you informed of progress throughout the development of our work - nothing goes out to press without your approval.

• How do you charge for Digital PR?

  We charge by the hour, usually in segments by the day and half day. For retainer clients we provide a monthly roadmap with tasks assigned to calculate the monthly fee.

  This amount will never change without prior client approval.

• How will results be measured?

  Whilst many are focused on volume of links and coverage, we firmly believe in quality over quantity in order to make the biggest impact. This is why we have developed our own bespoke Link Scoring Tool which measures the value of a link based on multiple factors including the authority of the publisher, follow vs no follow links, relevancy, and a number of additional elements. 

  In addition to this we measure success by looking at keyword rankings, organic traffic, social shares and mentions and we also work towards improving our clients’ domain rating.