Truly miss the days when "make great content" meant something... if only a little bit

Digital PR is an umbrella term that covers a range of tactics. You can’t just ‘do’ digital PR. 👇

I'm back at Fortune's success desk after 3 weeks off honeymooning and am planning 2025 interviews & features. 🔎 I’m looking for leaders to talk to me about their journey to the top, unusual advice for young aspirational workers and top tips for up and coming founders or CEOs.

Here's why you never should lose hope in a pitch — a thread:

🇺🇸 Calling American PRs & connections: I’ll be in NYC in two weeks for a few days. Want to meet for lunch/drinks/dinner? Drop me an email: Orianna.Royle@fortune.com Keen to meet people who have a roster of CEO/ entrepreneurial clients fit for @FortuneMagazine’s success vertical

🚨 It's my first week at Bloomberg, covering TikTok and social media! If you work at TikTok or did recently I'd love to chat: Reach out securely (off rec) on Signal/WhatsApp at 310-526-1242. And who else should I talk to? What should I look at? Email: alevine136@bloomberg.net

Hello #freelance writers! As we look to fill out our editorial calendar through the rest of the year, I am once again humbling requesting your @Thrillist pitches for travel stories. These can be sent to pitches@thrillist.com. What are we looking for, you might be wondering? (1/)

If you work in #digitalpr you need to check out the Digital PR Resource Library from @ilikeyoumatt 🙏

ICYMI: Google's next core update to reward content where helpfulness is taken to heart... seroundtable.com/google-impr…

I’ll: - Only pitch newsworthy items - Spend hours researching - Write 10 subject lines & choose best one - Hyperpersonalize for the journalist - Get feedback from team members - Only submit when I *know* it’s compelling - Coach the client to nail the interview TL;DR PR is hard.

I had an excellent chat with @WillHobson of @RiseatSeven on the @BuzzStream podcast. Will provided incredible insights into digital PR from both sides of the pond. Here's a sneak peek talking about what digital PR is. bit.ly/3xHXB6K #digitalpr #linkbuilding #seo

Feels *exciting* to be part of the PR community today with the launch of Peter Shankman's HERO - Help Every Reporter Out! 👏😊 #PRTwitter

You know how HARO (help a reporter out) died? Well it’s been resurrected. Peter Shankman who originally created HARO before selling it, has just announced that he’s made a new version of it called HERO (help every reporter out). You can sign up at help every reporter .com

A peer in a PR group I’m part of broke down in tears. Honestly, I could relate. Our industry is tough. Not just because: - It doesn’t matter who you “know” - Getting top-tier placements is an art science - You have to be scrappy, adaptable, and tenacious to succeed But also because of client expectations. This colleague got their client multiple top-tier placements. But they were still unhappy and demanded more. The problem: Even the best PR firm on the planet can’t control what happens *after* you get placed. They can get you in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch — But they can’t determine whether a client converts any of the interest from investors, business partners, and elite talent that follows. If you’re working or plan to work with a PR firm… Keep this in mind: Behind every placement are human beings. Who 👏 worked their butts off 👏 to get your company featured. And the better you treat them— The harder they’ll work for you next time.

One other thing... Get to know who actually works at the media outlets and what the jobs actually are. I worked in TV news for 15 years as a producer and assignment editor, and it's sad so many PR people don't seem to understand the 1st point of contact in a newsroom should be the assignment desk, not the main anchor. Are there reporters with certain beats like health, education, entertainment? Keeping track of who does what will help you be more efficient in sending pitches and the journalists will appreciate the effort and the fact that you are not wasting their time. My experience was that most PR people would only make an effort to get to know the on-air talent and not the people who actually plan coverage and decide what goes in the newscasts and produces the content.

Last week @Britt_Klontz & I ran a live workshop where we quizzed freelance journalist, @SurenaChande, about what journalists want from PRs. For those that missed the live session, I've just published some of the highlights...

Each week Google are sending trend insights from their newly launched Google Trends Newsletter, which can useful for newsjacking/reactive PR (h/t @asparajuice). For example, last week they mentioned that searches for “can you get hayfever in February” were breaking out. ​ If I had a relevant client, I could push out a comment about it to secure coverage In the past week several publications have written about hayfever, and The Sun covered it just yesterday. Signing up to Google Trends newsletter can help you to stay on top with what's trending & put you at advantage for newsjacking/reactive stories. I share tips just like this in my newsletter each week. You can find the links to both newsletters in the next tweet

🚀 Nofollow links work, here's proof 🔥 Nofollow links from DA80/90 websites that is... Top National news websites you will ALL know. Hopefully theres value in this for you all 🤪 We all know Google said in September 2019 it would start viewing nofollow links as a "hint"... How big a hint is it? That I don't know in isolation. What you have here is the impact of about 8 to 12 "nofollow only" PR links into different internal pages over the last 40 ish days. Branded anchors only. 8 keywords into the top 3... 4 of them to no3 2 of them to no2 2 of them to no1 That is not insignificant. No "it depends". No "correlation and causation" debate etc etc. No current core update activity 😇 I don't often get such a clean opportunity to evaluate results where there wasn't anything else to muddy the waters... like a mix of follow/nofollow from a PR campaign which is typical. When you're earning top quality relevant PR coverage & links, don't worry about follow/nofollow. It all just works. Keep building them 💪 And if you want Digital PR, my DM's are open 😎

Over the past year a real focus of the team has been creating campaigns for clients that target high-authority gov.uk websites and organisations. In 2023 alone our team built more of these links than I've ever built in my career...

Given John Mu said Digital PR is… and I quote: “just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases” Doesn’t that mean Digital PR roles are seriously under paid??