Digital public relations (PR) is where you use digital channels (namely, the Internet) to raise awareness for your brand and improve its public perception. 

It’s the online version of traditional PR, which focuses on networking with journalists and media professionals to land valuable TV, radio, and magazine spots. 

In the digital PR world, you connect with bloggers, social media influencers, and online journalists to secure valuable backlinks and media placements to:

  • Rank higher on search engines like Google 
  • Raise awareness for your brand 
  • Generate referral traffic 
  • Improve your brand’s public image 

Also, the use of AI for digital PR has taken off in recent years, as there are plenty of AI-powered tools available that can automate and speed up digital PR processes. 

In fact, you can do all sorts of amazing things with AI to enhance your digital PR and SEO strategies. 

For instance, a major aspect of digital PR is finding relevant digital media contacts (like influencers and bloggers) to target for backlinks, brand mentions, and other types of shout-outs. Yet, hunting down the contact info for all these individuals manually is easier said than done. 

Modern AI-powered PR tools are able to automate this process, providing you with hundreds of viable contacts and websites to target within seconds. 

You can also use AI to generate ideas, create content, spot emerging trends, automate email outreach, and analyze the habits of your target audience. 

In other words, you can use AI tools to overcome the most common challenges associated with link-building and media outreach. In this guide, we’ll teach you all the ways you can leverage AI to improve your digital PR strategy, so stick around! 

AI-Powered Journalist Outreach 

First, let’s take a look at how AI tools speed up the journalist outreach process. 

Without AI, you’ll have to scour the internet to find relevant media outlets, blogs, and websites that:

1. Share your target audience 

AND

2. Accept guest posts and provide media citations 

This process can prove challenging even for the most popular industries and niches, as not every outlet will share your audience or be willing to play ball (i.e., link back to your website). 

A common manual tactic for identifying potential media outlets is to use Google search operators. This is where you conduct a search that looks something like this:

(your niche) “guest posts”

Wrapping guest posts in quotations tells Google to search for that exact phrase, and it can be an effective way to find guest posting opportunities. 

For example, here’s what happens when we search for gardening “guest posts”:

The only problem?

Sifting through all these blogs and websites will take a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll find a suitable one to pitch to. 

This is a big reason why digital PR professionals are flocking to AI tools that greatly simplify and even automate this process. 

For example, instead of conducting manual searches on Google to find viable guest post opportunities for your gardening business, you could just bring up ChatGPT and ask it to build a media list for you. 

Here’s what that looks like:

All we had to do was ask, and ChatGPT provided us with a massive media list within seconds. This isn’t even the entire thing:

Now, you have a list of relevant media outlets that you can start reaching out to immediately. However, ChatGPT isn’t always 100% reliable, so you will need to do a little vetting on your part to ensure you find what you’re looking for. 

The good news is ChatGPT tends to be good at building media lists, as it compiles real-world websites complete with functioning links (most of the time, as one of the sites on the list was down for maintenance). 

AI tools specifically designed for digital PR and journalist outreach 

If AI tools were the Mario Kart roster, ChatGPT would be Mario, the well-rounded option that can tackle almost anything. 

Yet, sometimes you need something a little more specialized than a jack-of-all-trades. 

For instance, you may want to create more in-depth media lists than ChatGPT can provide, or you may want an AI tool to provide you with journalist contact information. 

Luckily, there are AI-powered tools that are specifically intended for digital PR tasks. 

One example is Dazzle, a digital PR tool that uses AI to:

  1. Compile and organize relevant media lists
  2. Find journalist details and contact information 
  3. Draft content like press releases and outreach emails 

Arguably, its most valuable feature is its ability to provide important details about journalists, like what they typically write about and their interests. 

This makes it a lot easier to craft personalized outreach emails that appeal to journalist’s preferences and writing styles, heightening the chances that you’ll receive a response (and hopefully form a lucrative relationship). 

In this way, AI digital PR tools like Dazzle are able to predict which journalists are most likely to respond to your queries, which is undeniably useful and time-saving. 

After all, a major challenge of manually researching media outlets is determining which ones will actually respond to your emails. 

For instance, the Google search operator method that we used previously led us to a site that lists 200 gardening blogs that accept guest posts:

 

You’re in for a lot of clicking, reading, and sorting if you want to find outreach targets this way:

Now, we’re not knocking this list by any means. It’s an incredibly detailed list that contains each website’s domain authority score and average traffic numbers, both of which are very helpful metrics. 

What it isn’t, though, is quick or convenient. 

When you compare manually scouring through this giant list to simply asking an AI tool like ChatGPT or Dazzle to do it for you, it becomes increasingly clear why AI tools are taking over the digital PR space. 

AI-powered sentiment analysis 

Another area where AI tools shine is sentiment analysis, which is the act of analyzing your customer’s perception of your brand. 

Sentiment analysis is a pivotal part of any digital PR campaign, as the very nature of public relations is to determine how the public perceives your brand. So, if your sentiment analysis isn’t on point, it has the potential to negatively impact your entire digital PR campaign. 

Manual sentiment analysis involves reading all your customer reviews to determine what your audience thinks of your products, services, and support. 

You can also dive deeper with social listening tools like Google Trends to gauge what the public thinks about your brand. 

However, traditional review platforms and reputation management tools are limited in that they typically only provide an average star rating out of 5. While this can give you a general idea of what the public thinks, it’s too vague to draw any more detailed insights out of it. 

Also, traditional review tools tend to miss certain things, like when a customer mentions something bad despite leaving a perfect 5-star review. 

AI-powered sentiment analysis, though, is way more powerful. 

Since AI can process vast volumes of data in seconds, it’s extremely effective at analyzing customer sentiments. 

There are also many ways that you can leverage AI-powered sentiment analysis in your favor, so let’s take a look at a few:

  • Using AI to detect emotionally-driven responses. AI tools that use natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) excel at detecting emotions in customer reviews and feedback. You can use this ability to form a list of all your positive, neutral, and negative responses from customers. This will make it easy to determine if your customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with certain products and services. 
  • Finding unique insights in every review. It’s easy to gloss over perfect 5-star reviews when manually analyzing your customer’s sentiments. The same is true for 1-star reviews, as the assumption is the review will be purely negative. However, the truth is that reviewers often mention positive aspects in negative reviews and negative aspects in positive reviews, so it’s important not to ignore them. With AI-powered sentiment analysis, you can easily pick up on these nuanced takes. 
  • Uncover emerging trends. Besides understanding what your audience thinks of your brand, you can also uncover hot new trends using AI-driven sentiment analysis. AI tools are able to compile data from multiple sources like social media platforms and news sites to clue you in on what the public is saying about specific products, services, and brands. This makes it easy to spot trends emerging before they truly take off, enabling you to join in on the fun to promote your business. 

Qualtrics and Sprout Social are two tools that provide this type of sentiment analysis, and new programs are popping up every day. 

AI-Driven Backlink Analysis and Link Prospecting 

Next, let’s look at how AI tools can aid with link prospecting for your digital PR campaigns. 

Link prospecting is where you compile a list of relevant, authoritative websites to target for backlinks. Much like compiling media lists, this task is cumbersome and time-consuming when done manually. 

Semrush’s Link-Building Tool and Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool are two of the best for automating link prospecting. 

First, let’s build a list of link prospects using Semrush. 

Semrush is a comprehensive SEO platform that uses a combination of AI and traditional SEO tools. Its Link-Building Tool hunts down valuable backlink opportunities for your site based on your specifications. Here’s how the tool works. 

First, select the Link-Building Tool from the left-hand sidebar:

After that, select Start a New Project if your domain isn’t set up. Next, you’ll need to enter a list of your target keywords:

You can add up to 10 keywords, but it’s up to you how many you choose to include. 

Once you’ve entered your keywords, the final step is to enter your primary competitors:

As soon as you’ve entered your competitors, hit the Start Link Building button to generate a list of backlink prospects:

As you can see, the tool produced 2,509 backlink prospects for us to use, and you can narrow things down further by using advanced filters (like sorting them by TLD, keyword, or URL type). 

Semrush also has its Copilot AI which provides SEO suggestions on the fly. It recommends things like specific keywords, technical optimizations, and backlink opportunities. 

The only downside is you can’t actually interact with the AI chatbot-style, meaning you’re stuck with the suggestions it provides. 

Using Ahrefs to identify competitor backlink opportunities 

Link-building is a major aspect of any digital PR campaign since backlinks are necessary for higher search rankings and raising brand awareness. 

If you’re having a hard time finding backlinks strong enough to outrank your competitors, sometimes the best move is to see where the competition is getting their backlinks from. 

Our favorite tool for this purpose is Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis tool, so let’s quickly learn how to use it. 

You can find the Competitive Analysis Tool in the toolbar at the top of the page after you log in:

To use the tool to find link prospects, select referring domains instead of keywords:

Note that the tool lets you add up to 10 competitors, so you don’t have to stick with just three. 

Once you hit Show Link Opportunities, you’ll get to see all the websites that link to your competitors but not to you:

You can export this list as a PDF for further analysis using other tools (including AI tools). 

AI in Digital PR: Real Success Stories 

Even though these technologies are relatively new, there are plenty of success stories already floating around the internet.

This proves the sheer effectiveness of AI in PR strategy, as brands were able to take these tools and run with them. 

Here’s a look at 2 case studies where companies found success by using AI for digital PR. 

Bayer: Using AI to predict trends 

The Australian team at Bayer was tired of responding to market trends and wanted to start predicting them instead. 

They quickly realized the potential AI had to make this a reality, so they didn’t waste any time getting to work. 

They used Google’s cloud-based machine learning technology to build a smart forecasting model. It analyzed climate and weather information along with Google Trends data to successfully predict upticks in flu cases across the country. 

The strategy worked like a charm and led to a long-term 2.6x increase in their organic traffic. They also saw an 85% increase in their click-through rates year-over-year.  

Buzz Radar: Using AI to predict audience behaviors 

Buzz Radar is making waves with its Cognitive Command Center, a digital marketing hub powered by IBM’s Watson technologies. 

It’s able to provide real-time insights and predictive analytics for client’s target audiences. The tool works by analyzing billions of conversations across the internet and social media. 

Once the AI provides deep insights into a brand’s perception, Buzz Radar’s experts step in to give their two cents. This combination of AI plus human expertise has proven to be enormously effective. 

So far, the company has saved millions of dollars for its clients and is able to outperform larger, more established competitors. 

Final Thoughts: Leveraging AI for Digital PR Campaigns 

Here’s a recap of what we’ve covered so far:

  1. AI tools speed up and simplify many digital PR tasks like journalist outreach, compiling media lists, and prospecting for backlinks.
  2. ChatGPT, Qualtrics, and Sprout Social are all great tools to find media outlets and reach out to journalists. 
  3. Semrush and Ahrefs both have amazing features for link prospecting and competitor backlink analysis. 
  4. Companies are already leveraging AI-powered tools to achieve success with their digital PR, SEO, and digital marketing campaigns. 

Are you interested in letting experts handle the digital PR process to ensure success?

Our newly launched Digital PR service will take the process off your hands. Our experts will handle media outreach for you to generate valuable citations and backlinks. Also, feel free to get in touch to discuss solutions to your unique SEO needs!