5 PR Lessons to Learn for SEO Outreach

PR and Outreach are considered one in the same but quite often take different approaches for the same aim, to get content published (and, hopefully, a link back to your website).

The traditional view of PRs wining and dining journalists can still be seen today, but PRs also focus on digital content placement, so when working on outreach for SEO purposes it is important to consider the competition and how to stand out in a journalist’s rammed inbox.

No matter what type of content you are pitching from guest blogs to infographics, before you send that email consider these points:

Content, content, content

Regardless of how good of a relationship you have with a journalist or website, if your content isn’t up to scratch they aren’t going to publish it. So first things first, get creative.

Check out our 6 Steps to Writing Awesome Article Titles that Drive Traffic

Start by brainstorming content titles relevant to your client and the website you would like to get published on. Ideally when you pitch to a website you should have more than just a title to give them, so why not draft an opening paragraph that can give the journalist a feel of what the article will be about. This can help them decide whether it is of interest, and it also gives them an opportunity to request a different angle or other areas that should be covered in the article.

Target publications

When considering what website to outreach to, domain authority is something that should be seen as very important but it is just as important that when pitching you consider whether the website is likely to want to link to your website. The content you pitch must be relevant to the website audience and aligned with the websites ethos - otherwise your chances of success will be very slim!

Contacts 

There are many tools available to help with outreach that automatically pull in journalists’ contact details from a website, however it is important to check these are up-to-date and that you are sending content to the most appropriate person. 

If you have access to a database of journalist contact details, great, but these can be costly and not everyone can justify this cost. Instead, a lot of websites detail the names and contact details of journalists on their website. If they don’t, why not look them up on social media? Many journalists use Twitter for work purposes - 46 percent of journalists are open to receiving press releases on Twitter - so we can always approach them this way too. Alternatively, connect with them on LinkedIn. You can find out more about them and they can put a face to the name!

Personalisation

Journalists receive hundreds, maybe even thousands, of email pitches a day so you need to make your pitch stands out and is personal to attract their attention. 

Once you have connected with journalists on social media it should help to give you a sense of the person you're pitching to and the sort of tone you should take with them. A generic pitch can be spotted a mile away, and by making a journalist feel special they are more likely to pay attention to your email and remember you.

Stand out from the crowd 

79 percent of journalists said subject lines greatly affect whether they will open an email so make sure that this includes all the important information. Make it attention grabbing and state whether the article is being offered on an exclusive basis.

Once you have got a journalist's attention you don’t have long to show them why your content should be published on their website - 70% of journalists spend less than one minute on each message they do open. Therefore make your opening count and include all the selling points of your content in the first few sentences!