As a small business, the main challenges you face have almost always got a strong connection to funding. Capital is an issue in the beginning and that is why most small enterprises or start-ups struggle with advertising and digital PR. In most cases, an entrepreneur won’t be able to afford to hire an agency to do this sort of work for them.

Given the current market’s behavioural patterns, it’s not something you can overlook because an online presence and PR strategy can either make or break your business in the modern age. Consumers shop online. So naturally, that is where you need to be advertising.

The more comprehensive reasons for advertising online are as follows:

• Insight into your relevant market
• Refining your target market (demographics, psychographics etc.)
• Understanding your consumers’ behaviour
• Overall brand awareness/reach
• Building a relationship with your customers through engagement

Now, let’s quickly establish what Digital PR is:

Digital PR is the way in which you can get your message out there in order to build a presence online. It’s what is used to build brand awareness in the form of immediate communication to strengthen or enhance your businesses exposure and search engine optimisation. Using digital PR for small businesses enhances these things by making use of assorted online channels such as:

• Social Media
• Online Newsrooms
• Article directories
• Industry related sites
• Press release sites
• Blogs

Therefore, it drives traffic to your website and improves your search engine rankings.

The main Digital PR techniques small businesses should focus on:

Link building

An organic way of driving traffic to your website. Link building is when other websites link back to yours. This is simple digital PR for small businesses, in fact, all businesses. The reason you need this is that this is the way Google determines whether your website is a valid resource for information. Simple strategies for link building are as follows:

• Creation of high-quality content that people will naturally want to reference and share on their platforms. Think outside the box and try to be personal. In other words, be more human as opposed to just another source of generic information. Humour and personal referencing go a long way in truly connecting with people.
• Try to connect with influencers. The best way to find individuals who are at the forefront of your relative market is through Instagram. Find those people and put your product in front of them (give them a free service or product to try out and review)
• Ask your friends, former colleagues and industry affiliates to link to your site.

Get your brand featured on an external website

Ever heard of HARO? It’s a fantastic way of gaining online media coverage. Journalists and bloggers have very demanding deadlines and can’t afford to spend too much time looking for references or researching. They need that time to write.

So, what HARO (Help a Reporter) does is allow you to connect with journalists that are looking for insight into whichever topic they are writing about. It is a great form of digital PR for small businesses. However, this is where you come in. You pitch them with the relevant info and if they’re interested, they’ll let you know and you’ll be included in their article – a brilliant way of enhancing your SEO efforts. Read some of the success stories here.

Make use of Twitter

Twitter isn’t just about throwing shade at people or discussing current events. As a small business, you can use Twitter to establish yourself as a leader in your industry, breathing life into digital PR for small businesses. It won’t cost you any money, but it’ll cost you quite a bit of your time if you’re looking to do it properly. First off you need to have a branded Twitter page. Next step is to build your companies presence by doing the following:

• Follow at least 50 people in your target audience every month (influencers, similar businesses, consumers etc.)
• Regularly post valuable content relevant to your industry and target market (tag accounts whenever you can)
• Engage in active conversation with people who are speaking about your products or industry
• Spend at least ten minutes a day searching for relevant keywords and hashtags and then join in on those discussions – give your expert opinion because this is how you’ll build esteem amongst your peers and help your business appear more credible

Reusing/repurposing old content

Sure, temporary content like articles or posts that relate to the news or recent updates can’t be repurposed, but the content that you and your team produce that relates to your expertise can always be reused. Another great technique of digital PR for small businesses.

If there have been any changes in your market, or if there are any current trends worth mentioning then update those articles/blog posts and make them current again – a lot of the time it’ll just be a few tweaks here and there.

You can also repurpose blogs entirely. For instance, you could take the copy in an old blog and turn it into an infographic for Twitter or an image card/quote card for Instagram. By linking back to the blog, you’re essentially breathing new life into it.

As you can imagine, these efforts require a lot of time. This is where we come in. We have built connections with key influencers in the digital space and understand the challenges small businesses face. Get in touch with us here or view our affordable pricing plans here.