How To Develop a Content Strategy for PR

Developing A Content Strategy

Let's get straight into it. First, you need to define your goals — whether that's brand awareness, building links, coverage, or more.

Secondly, you need to know the audience you're creating the content for. Ask questions such as: who will it reach? What does your audience care about? How does your audience connect — do they use Google search, social media, or watch videos? These are vital questions to answer when figuring out who your audience is.

Assess your current content. Look at how it's currently performing, using audits such as ContentKing or Ahrefs to figure out what's currently working for you. Use traffic-light audit and performance techniques so you can remove, keep, or repurpose your content.

Create core content clusters and pillars, and build your content around them. Develop a content hub and build core content pillars from it to create a wealth of knowledge. For example, if you're a financial services company, your content pillar could be "tax." From this, you can build out subtopics — self-employed tax, employment tax, and VAT. This helps group keywords and build out your topics.

To help you generate stories, you can type keywords into BuzzSumo to see which articles have the most shares and engagement. Google Trends is also good for seeing what's trending right now. Plus, follow people on X/Twitter who share insights on data that may help you generate ideas. In general, it's good to follow people who share different kinds of content, as it can help you generate different ideas.

Content Creation Tips

• Use Answer The Public — this will help you figure out what people are searching for.
• Consume different types of content to inspire you.
• Inject your campaigns with something fun if you're working with a client in a "boring" industry.

Digital PR

When creating content for digital PR, ensure it has a unique hook. Create content that's impossible to miss — not only will it catch the attention of journalists, but when launched it will help build brand awareness.

When launching a digital PR campaign, you need to ensure it has a unique hook. Does it add something new, and do you have supporting assets? Consider using videos too (up to 30 seconds long) — but make sure before launching that they can link back to you. Also consider who will cover your story; it's worth thinking about this in advance.

Most journalists are drawn to anger, sadness, joy, and nostalgia. Journalists use Google Trends data to understand campaigns, and they tend to like surveys, data, and illustrations that show studies they've reported on. To help journalists with this, it's best to plan your campaign and share what you've found with them via surveys, data, or illustrations. The key is to provide content they aren't able to produce themselves — usually content that takes time to research and create. With this in mind, always double-check your data, and make sure your spelling is spot on.

When outreaching, it's important to keep your subject line around 10 to 12 words long, and don't use emojis. Another thing that can be overlooked is getting the journalist's name right — check their profiles on social media or any other hubs journalists might use.

To make your pitch exciting, use great article titles such as "(Data) Revealed: The Most Stylish City" — note how "(Data)" is in the title to show it's backed by data. Another good tip is to spice up your stats. For example, instead of stating that 43% of people hate pets, you could say "Nearly 50% of people hate pets."

When pitching to journalists, it's important to signpost the data they're getting, such as illustrations, and point to the link where the asset is kept. It's also a good habit to write a summary briefly describing the key points of the data — this helps them quickly scan the information and saves them having to click through and read it all at once. To help the article's authority, and to boost your chances when pitching, it's good to include an expert quote — this can grab the journalist's attention and make them more inclined to go with your story. Finally, when adding assets to your pitch, it's best to use Dropbox or Google Photos.

How To Adapt To Different Languages & Cultures

Digital PR on a global scale has very similar tactics to your national strategy. The main differences are the languages and cultures. So, when launching a digital PR campaign internationally, it's important to hire a native speaker who can speak the language and understand the cultural approaches.

To make your campaigns go global, you'll need to adapt your pitch and email to every country. One campaign that did well was comparing the prices of the new Xbox launch across the globe — the most expensive country turned out to be Argentina. This example highlights a good way to pitch an idea globally, as it presents an opportunity to capture different countries around the world.

When you're starting out, set realistic targets. It's good to try to target top-tier publications, since coverage there tends to get picked up nationally, and lower-tier publications will often follow. When defining your KPIs, it's important to do your research — look at your competitors and how they approach their campaigns. When starting out, start small and target a couple of countries; using a campaign from the UK and pitching it to the USA is a good place to begin.

Quick Tips When Outreaching To Different Countries

• 🇫🇷 France — Always provide a phone number in the pitch, so they can contact you by phone.
• 🇪🇸 Spain — When pitching, target the editor and always follow up.
• 🇩🇰 Denmark — The journalist will say they'll cover your story, but they might not always follow through.
• 🇸🇪 Sweden — Not always approachable.
• 🇳🇴 Norway — Strict with linking.
• 🇩🇪 Germany — Don't expect content to be accepted quickly — plan months ahead.
• 🇮🇹 Italy — Mostly freelance journalists.
• 🇦🇺 Australia — Time difference plays a part — keep this in mind.
• 🇺🇸 US — Prefer state-by-state data.
• 🇦🇷 Argentina — They cover strong European stories.