I’ve built hundreds of THOUSANDS of links on some of the biggest press for the last 7 years for global and start up brands in both b2b and b2c markets! This is what I’ve learnt:
👉🏼 b2b and b2c ideas/stories are the same. You’re still talking to people. Nothing changes
...
👉🏼 using video in your campaign (and offering it to journalists) get 65% + open rates everytime. USE IT
👉🏼 use Dropbox to send file in releases and not attached/wetransfer
👉🏼 early morning outreach is best
👉🏼 the best ideas always have an international angle as the main hook
👉🏼 if you’re SEO campaign can also work for other areas (social, brand, email) - you’re 90% more likely to get more budget one day (from other teams too)
👉🏼 getting a campaign off the ground takes a few weeks atleast. Clients hate waiting. Have a plan to ensure CONSISTENCY
👉🏼 reporting on your links (organic impact, traffic movements etc ) is just as important as the idea. Learn to report and you’re already one step forward to a promotion
👉🏼 weekend and bank holidays are very successful to landing links. Whilst everyone sleeps, I go in. Win win
👉🏼 include a maximum of external 3 links in your outreach emails (2 is ideal) to ensure you get a link you want but don’t push your email to spam
👉🏼 knowing the opens is valuable as fuck - use @buzzstream and never look back
👉🏼 build relationships on twitter and it helps
👉🏼 no follow links are just as valuable. Stop thinking like an SEO at times and drive TRAFFIC
👉🏼 some affiliate links pass search value - it’s not all doom and gloom
👉🏼 traditional PR teams will be your blocker - learn to work with them, but don’t give them power over your work
👉🏼 surveys are a waste of money - you can get data in other ways
👉🏼 newsjacking/reactive is one of the biggest link driving strategies anyone can do
👉🏼 doing big fancy campaigns doesn’t always deliver big fancy results. It does make your client feel awesome though
👉🏼 links can move the needle a lot faster than you think. I’ve seen ranking changes in a week - SEO can too be short term
👉🏼 don’t ring journos - ain’t nobody got time for that
👉🏼 get to the point in emails - cut the shit
👉🏼 use imagery and lots of it (your own if you can)
👉🏼 a TYLA link drives the most traffic to any fashion/lifestyle brand
👉🏼 Cosmo is the biggest traffic driver for anything in women/sex
👉🏼 daily Mail coverage gets the most shares out of any publication
👉🏼 journalists do link to taboo websites if the content is great
👉🏼 finance/business niche is probably the easiest niche to build links to.
👉🏼 the number of links to a campaign doesn’t matter , you can achieve #1 rankings with a handful of links. Just better ones than your competitors
👉🏼 do a link audit and get links you’ve not already got
👉🏼 stop just creating links to a blog and be more strategic about link equity
👉🏼 internal links within your campaign content are so much more valuable than you think
👉🏼 getting links consistently is what separates you from the shit
I’ve got loads more .. il keep adding
👉🏼 global index’s (campaign type) nearly every-time get 80+ links
👉🏼 don’t ask for a link in your first outreach email - you’ll 99% get a link without asking if Your content is good enough.
👉🏼 if you do have to ask, when asking for a link ... just ask. Ask to be credited and it’l happen.
👉🏼 if a journo didn’t open your email, try them again with a different subject line
👉🏼 always thank your journos after they cover your client. Itl help for next time
👉🏼 if you do a campaign which is based on “every UK cities favourite X” you’re so limiting your campaign. You might get some regionals and a couple of nationals but go global - even if your client isn’t global. You will get more U.K. links
👉🏼 I have the best digital PR team in the world
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How Aldi is driving serious online rankings, drove 200,000 people by 8am this morning, got a product ranking no.1 in DAYS all through product PR and why (when done right) can be one of your biggest SEO, link and traffic drivers... (a thread)
(And why SEO can be short term too)
Aldi’s middle aisle has become of the most loved marketing tactics and now gone virtually. It’s essentially an aisle full of home/garden products at super cheap price and yes you can get a BARGAIN
One of their most popular products (every year) is the egg garden chair. Retailing at £149.99 you can’t get it any cheaper anywhere else
They bring it out same time every year and use product PR to build the hype
Here's (some ideas) of what travel companies should be doing to get ready for the doors opening for international bookings ✈️:
👉Add "anywhere/anytime" selections into your booking forms - people don't know where and when they want to go, they just want to find a deal and a safe location. Don't rely on them knowing an exact date and location and instead be the experts that tell them the best places to go
👉Pull internal search and offsite search data and understand which locations people are "googling" the most. Where is most in demand, which location pages are getting the most traction, where does everyone feel safe to go
There's only so much talent in digital PR right now and if you haven't noticed, everyones hiring.
Senior people who have been there and done that in digital PR are extremely rare and it will cost you a lot to get recruiters to help, they come with pre-existing ways of working..
my advice... create them. Progress your team you've got, dedicate someone to training.
My focus is to create the next level of digital PR talent - we have 25 in our digital PR team alone and growing even further. International countries (europe mainly) is even harder ...
And our focus is to train the next german PRs, spanish and Dutch to our standard.
It's faster to do that in 6 months that to get someone in at this rate.
We’ve been thinking about completely scrapping emails and going 100% on slack. Here’s reasons why we WONT be doing that:
1. It’s hard to hold people accountable to deadlines on slack. As someone who must set 20 tasks a day to their staff, I can’t remember half of them. Email ...
Is easier traceable, easier to find the deadline and easier to hold someone accountable without going through hundreds more messages that you sent between setting that task and chasing for it.
2. Slack has become the way to “chat at the water cooler”. Small talk, gossip, generic
Chat, is a big part of our slack now. We have multiple groups to keep convos focused, but strict tasks, documents, convos all get lost in it. Use email to separate it out.
3. You can’t bcc - I use this a lot when keeping people in the loop
Building links on top tier domains in the financial/medical space builds trust and authority with Google
In 6 months, we drove a 329% increase in organic traffic for a forex trading client of ours and 53% increase in organic conversions. A thread on how...
AskTraders came to us having NEVER landed a link on a national press before. Most of their backlinks were niche domains, financial press, and blogs.
They'd heard of our work and challenged us to change that.
So we came up with 3 strategies...
1. Press had never heard of AT before and the brand was so low, we couldn't even track it. So we needed to build authority with the media and ran a newsjacking strategy.
We used AT's traders as well as our newsjacking team at Rise, to push comments and data