Digital PR
Reactive Digital PR: What is it & how do you do it?
In this article looking at the full spectrum of Reactive Digital PR, we’re going to be diving into a few topics to break it down, including:
- What is Reactive Digital PR?
- What does being ‘reactive’ look like?
- How do you do it?
As an agency that builds thousands of links per year globally, we’re constantly looking for opportunities in our clients’ industries for stories that are currently being covered or are going to be. Here, we’ll provide insight on what ‘reactive’ is, different types of ‘reactive’ activity and how to do it successfully.
Before jumping into ‘reactive’ it’s worth quickly covering Digital PR in itself, which you can also read more about in our Guide to Digital PR from top to bottom.
However, for those of you without the time to read 17,000 words, we can quickly surmise; Digital PR is the process of creating stories that people want to share.
This is primarily used as a tool to engage journalists at top tier media publications, like the BBC, New York Post, Daily Mail, etc. all the way through to niche industry publications like Bitcoin.com or Cult of Mac in order to get a brand featured, and ideally, a link back to their website as a result. Both of which are trust signals – a huge element for any target audience and search engines by extension.
What is Reactive Digital PR
The ‘reactive’ element in Digital PR changes the process slightly but the outcomes remain exactly the same; we’re still looking for top tier media coverage within your niche.
However, now, we’re just tying it to a particular story or opportunity that is happening in the press.
Reactive Digital PR is the process of adding value to upcoming or existing trending news stories
The key difference and also benefit to Reactive Digital PR is that you know or have a pretty good indication that journalists are going to be writing about a particular topic or story.
When it comes to other Digital PR tactics such as creative campaigns, you’re creating a piece of research and story from scratch, whilst ‘reactive’ gives you a foot in the door from the get-go – there’s already an opportunity for you to build from.
As a process, this mostly changes the ‘ideation’ phase of a typical Digital PR campaign.
The ‘what’ you do here is much easier to narrow down when it comes to being reactive – because you already know there is or is going to be interest in the topic.
Quick example: Christmas. Every year at that special time, you know journalists are going to want stories that tie in various topics to Christmas. Travel related, energy/heating, shopping, loneliness – we’ve even done Christmas angles for plumbing companies. In advance, say June/July, you want to be thinking about the stories you can create that will serve the needs of those journalists who have to write Christmas related content.
Reactive Digital PR is then about finding the right opportunity to make the most of. The rest of the process is on a par with traditional Digital PR – in that you are creatively solving how you are going to add the most value to the story and then outreaching to the correct people.
Types of Reactive Digital PR
Being ‘reactive’ to opportunities can come in different shapes and sizes. Some reactive opportunities are expected and you can plan for in advance, but others come out of the blue.
There are 3 core groups we can put ‘reactive’ into:
Newsjacking
Being reactive to a current trending story is newsjacking. If a celebrity does something or a piece of data hits the news that causes a wave of attention, or even when a TV show goes bananas, then creating content piggy-backing that story is newsjacking.
In the example above, we dove into the topic of tipping. Although there’s not a single trigger event that we were latching onto here – it’s a topic that where there’s been a growing debate around with even pilots (jokingly) holding signs after a flight asking for a tip. We crafted a survey of the U.S. population asking if tipping culture has gone too far and where people had been asked for tips. This hit a sweet-spot as journalists were more than happy to have useful content they could cover on a topic they knew readers cared about in that very moment.
PR Requests
A PR Request is something we’ve been doing for a long-time, and for the time spent responding to them, it can lead to some hugely valuable links with very little time spent.
Platforms like Qwoted, Response Source, etc. and even #prrequest or #journorequest on X/Bluesky are all ways for journalists to ask industry experts for their insight to be included in an article they are currently working on. On any given day, you could have 390 opportunities drop in your inbox (I counted…just now).
In this sense, you are being reactive to the opportunity.
Unlike many of the other activities here, PR Requests don’t tend to land you more than one link/brand mention at a time. However, it can be an extremely consistent tool for gaining coverage in industry-relevant and high-authority publications. It’s also a great tactic to use for those with limited resources and unable to invest in the larger style campaigns.
Another thing to bear in mind with PR Requests is that they have become more competitive in recent years, and the space is dominated by AI ‘experts’.
The AI’s are easy for journalists to ignore but the problem is the sheer volume pushes the likelihood of your insight being seen. This has reduced the tactics’ effectiveness over the years, but it’s still definitely worth investing time in.
Proactive
Christmas Day, Valentines Day, Halloween…National Rubber Ducky Day, these are all events we know are coming up and journalists are going to be writing about (some more than others).
Being ‘proactive’ to these events is newsjacking them before the fact. Having a plan for the days that suit your company and how you are going to add value to the inevitable upcoming stories is critical if you want to be included.
Here’s some of the types of opportunities you can plan to be proactive for:
- International and National Days
- Large events (think the Olympics, World Cup, Super Bowl, etc.)
- TV shows or movie releases
- Celebrity deaths (morbid, but when the Queen goes, or David Attenborough…you get the picture)
- Marriages or break-ups
- A company’s financials
- Prominent data release (house prices, job market, homelessness, etc.)
- Political events
Reacting to Opportunities
As discussed above, there are a number of different ways reactive opportunities can present themselves. However, in order for your efforts to be effective, there are some questions you should ask yourself before jumping into the conversation:
- Is the opportunity relevant to you?
- Can you add value to it?
- Is the story likely to be overly competitive relative to your value add proposition?
Relevance
Any piece of content you produce should, logically, be of interest to your audience.
If any of us were building, say, a search engine, we’d ideally create it to favour websites that have proven to dive into topics that a searcher would care about and use signals such as the quality of their content and how respected their associated content is to determine who to rank vs who not to.
This is something we’ve broken down in more detail in our post on Digital PRs impact on SEO performance.
When it comes to ‘reactive’, this core thinking is exactly the same.
If you are using Reactive Digital PR for the end goal of getting links and improving your organic traffic performance, the publications and context surrounding links to your site have to be relevant to have the most impact.
Separately, if you are using Reactive Digital PR to raise brand awareness, you also want to be targeting opportunities that are relevant because there is a greater chance it is your target audience who are interested in the story in the first place.
Both of these things aren’t separate. They are linked by design.
Adding Value
When you’ve seen a story to jump onto or you think ‘we could provide some data for the next Presidential elections’ – you must find a way of adding value.
No matter what opportunity it is that you go after, you have to provide value to journalists and either be the best source to use or the most accessible.
I previously wrote about the importance of methodologies in Digital PR on Buzzstream and the same principles apply here.
Here’s a quick list of ways you can add value to a story:
- Are you representing a prominent brand or expert a journalists eyes would light up at?
- Can you offer insight or advice from a reputable person on the topic?
- Do you have an insight different to the norm or widely accepted consensus?
- Do you have access to data that is easy to understand and source?
- Are you there when journalists are looking for this type of information?
- Is the methodology sound?
Competition
Another consideration you need to make is how much competition and noise exists, or will exist, on any given opportunity.
Timing is a huge factor when it comes to being successful at Reactive Digital PR and you can use timing to your advantage to out manoeuvre any potential competitors.
When it comes to trending topics that happen out of the blue, first mover advantage is a real thing. Journalists are looking for something to cover, and they want to cover it quickly.
For upcoming events that you are hoping to be more ‘proactive’ with, an easy way to check how competitive the event is going to be is using tools like Google Trends or simply using Google search data:
You can take this data two ways; the more, the merrier or, if you’re less confident in your value add, go for the opportunities likely to have less competitors.
