Back to Digital PR Basics with Steph Finch

Louise Parker:
Hi, it’s Louise here from the Digital PR Podcast. We have something new for you this season, not just a new season of podcast episodes, but mini episodes as well. The guests are all from our very own Digital PR team at Propellernet. And we’re just going to have quick little chats about the topics that are interesting us at the moment. Hope you enjoy.

Steve Baker:
We’re joined by one of our wonderful PR directors, Steph Finch. Steph, we’ve worked together for a decade now, or just over a decade.

Stephanie Finch:
Yes, lucky me and lucky you.

Steve Baker:
Hey, lucky me as well. We’re both lucky. But I wanted to start by just asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your career to date, if you would.

Stephanie Finch:
Yes, of course. I grew up in Devon, small town girl. Moved to the big city lights of Brighton in 2007. And then I studied English. I didn’t study anything in marketing specifically, but that led me into copywriting when I left university. And I wrote lots and lots and lots of hotel copy for a site called Low Cost Holidays and then ended up working for them as an intern. And they worked with an agency called Propellernet at the time. And that’s how I got to know about Propellernet. And it was quite an innovative way of working because this was like 2012, I think, and Low Cost holidays. They hired lots of junior staff and we were all given two destinations each, a summer destination and a city break destination. And we were in charge of doing the technical optimisation for those destination pages. We were responsible for writing all the content for those destination pages and we were responsible for doing link building to those destination pages. But this was at a time when you, it was still okay to buy links and blogger links were sort of deemed quite cool and great. And then the idea of getting links through PR was still almost The Holy Grail, and it was floated around, but that’s sort of really where I learned about it all. And then I learned a bit more about Propellernet, and I moved to Brighton and ended up working at Propellernet, where I didn’t do as much technical optimisation or content writing, but then was just doing link building full time. And that was 10 years ago. And here I am today. So I don’t have any traditional PR agency experience. I’m a complete digital PR thoroughbred.

Steve Baker:
What a way to put it. What a way to put it. So, but you, I mean, you’re a professional and you’ve been in the industry a long time. So I’m keen to get your views on what you think the differences are between digital PR and what we’d call probably more traditional PR. What do you think the differences are?

Stephanie Finch:
First, this is a great question because there’s a little niggle and I don’t think it bothers anyone else that much, but I’m just going to say it now whilst I have the platform. But I really don’t like using the phrase digital PR to describe what we do. Well, what we do at Propellernet and what other agencies do, the practice of creating PR stories to secure links that improve a site’s visibility, I don’t think should just be classed as digital PR because digital PR to me could be social marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing, which has anything to do with getting a brand message across on a digital platform. So that’s my little nickel, but for the sake of this podcast, but I feel that’s useful for any people new to the industry to understand as well. And I think also when you’re speaking to clients and you’re using the phrase digital PR, you just have to be aware that it could come with some semantic misunderstanding. But for people who understand that digital PR means creating PR stories, what is the difference between traditional and digital PR? I think, historically, it was Lynx, wasn’t it? The work we’ve been doing differed. I mean, you worked at a healthcare traditional PR agency for a long time.

Steve Baker:
Yeah, I worked at a couple, yeah, before joining Propellernet and going fully digital, yeah.

Stephanie Finch:
And it’s weird because in practice, the tactics that we do in digital PR can be very similar to tactics that are used in traditional PR. We can create survey stories and we can do product launches and we can do tips and advice, but the aims are a little bit different. So they’re measured a bit differently, I think is probably the main difference. Digital PR that we do, we sort of I guess I would say we put links first as one of the biggest KPIs and then a secondary KPI might be around brand messaging and reach and things like that. Whereas traditional PR, I think you might have brand message maybe as a top KPI, but that’s hard to track as well. It’s about the measurement of it but also links is something that you can’t deny does differentiate them a lot but I think they just are they’re not that different I think they’re just one’s an evolution of the other really I would say.

Steve Baker:
I think you know you’re bang right with the personally with the aims so like with traditional you’re often trying to do you know get sort of a certain message out there or like a certain type of publication or yeah, reach and awareness. Whereas digital PR, if we’re going to sort of call it that, like consistently, it has come from like a link building rather than a brand building genesis, isn’t it? It’s like, it’s, but actually what’s been interesting since, well, since we’ve both been at Propellernet, it feels like digital PR and traditional PR are becoming more intertwined. Would you agree? And if so, how intertwined do you think they are? Which might be quite a difficult question to answer. I don’t know how you measure that, but I’m interested in your thoughts anyway.

Stephanie Finch:
I think they are becoming hugely intertwined because when you look at the conversations that are happening around Twitter at the moment, we’re all holding each other a lot more responsible when we put out a campaign story. If it’s not relevant, if it’s not related to the brand, people are jumping on that a little bit more and saying, that’s not good digital PR. That’s just sort of link-baiting. So I think although the heritage of digital PR was in link building, it’s now evolved to where we’re putting the brand and the audience much higher up our objectives list. And then for traditional PR, I think They have different objectives and KPIs perhaps, but getting links wasn’t so front of mind for them in the same way. I think they’re getting such brilliant coverage and stories landed, I think, with traditional PR tactics. But you might get a homepage link and it just wasn’t something people who were trained in those specialisms were aware of. Just thinking a little bit more strategically of like, well, if this is from a travel company, and it’s all about going to Greece, let’s link to our Greece landing page instead of the homepage. And I think people coming into the industry now are probably a lot more comfortable with that sort of approach, compared to people who have been doing that, you know, they’ve got such amazing sales. As someone who’s been in traditional PR for like 30 years, you know, before pre-internet, you know, posting out press releases and faxes and it working really, really well, it’s difficult to then be told by the new people coming up that it’s wrong. I can totally appreciate that or that it could be done better because you’ve got a proven history of doing it absolutely fine. So yeah, I think they are becoming massively intertwined. And I think speaking to clients who are based in in-house PR teams, and they’re going on a journey and they’re learning like the old ways. And then they’re sort of working with traditional PR agencies. And then because of the work we do, they learn about what we do. And then they’re piecing it together and thinking actually that this is, these work brilliantly together. Let’s get both agencies working together taking the skills they’ve learned and moving on to new places where they’re putting digital first as their PR strategy. So I think it’s, they’re entwining so much and hopefully, and eventually they’ll sort of just end up merging completely. I don’t know, maybe in 10, 20 years, but there’ll be something new then.

Steve Baker:
Oh, true. It’s forever changing, isn’t it? Forever changing. You kind of touched on it here. So if you were a client, and we obviously work with a lot of clients who some of whom have us as a digital PR agency and a traditional PR agency but imagine I guess you’ve only got like budget for one or you just want to pick one like why would you why would a client choose digital PR over traditional PR, is it that you get the coverage and the brand message out there as well as links or is there something kind of more to it than that in your opinion?

Stephanie Finch:
I love this, I love this game, I love playing what if I was the client. It’s a good one. I think if I were a client, you’d have to start first by looking at what you have to report back on and what is going to be most important. For something like, you know, if you’re in a startup or a small business and you’ve got to rinse every single piece of value out of the budgets you have, knowing what I know, I think I would pursue digital PR work, because you can really relate that. If it’s so strategic, you can relate that back to, we’ve gained this many links, which has impacted these rankings, which has impacted this much traffic, which has led to this much more sales and revenue and then you can also layer on about how many people you reached and what kind of sites and titles and the relevancy and I think for a smaller budget that seems to get quite a massive return really. If you’re working for sort of part of a wider team for a massive company corporate then there’s a bit of both because there’s a sort of bit of brand protection involved as well and you’ve got more money to completely saturate broadcast and radio and podcasts and social media and then you’d have digital PR in the mix as well. But I think, yeah, if you had to just choose one, I would, of course, I am biased, but I would choose digital PR. I think you have to think about your audience as well. So if you’re like a challenger brand and you’re appealing to people, you know, 50 or 40s even, like a lot of that audience is online and you can be so super targeted with that then working with digital PR agencies makes more sense. If you’re working with a brand where your customers are 50, 60 over and maybe are more likely to pick up a newspaper or take the lead on brands from the radio, then perhaps a traditional PR agency would be better. So I think it’s a mix of how much budget you’ve got to play with, because I think you do get more bang for your buck with digital PR, but then also you have to think about where your audience are actually going to be as well.

Steve Baker:
Very, very true. I was going to continue playing ‘imagine you’re the client’, but it doesn’t seem as appropriate for the next question. And I know from my own experience that you have experience of this. You’ve got a client who has commissioned a traditional agency and a digital agency, right? Do you think those two separate teams who are sort of doing similar-ish things but maybe have a slightly different end goal. Do you think they can work well together? Are there like common missteps? How do you go about creating a great relationship between traditional and digital?

Stephanie Finch:
I think I suggested almost doing a talk about building relationships because so with not just your in-house PR team, but also their agency as well because usually as a digital PR team you get introduced to the company through the e-commerce team or SEO team and originally it was we really sort of had to push this was sort of five six years ago really pushed to be put in front of the in-house PR team and it was only when we started you know we were landing coverage on massive lifestyle magazines and nationals. It was then the in-house chairs were going, what is going on? And we need to know what’s happening if you’re landing stories, you know, in our spaces. And I think in-house PR teams so value their journalist relationships and they don’t want people ruining them on behalf of their brand, which I totally understand. And I think because, like you said, the genesis of digital PR was in link building and sort of being a bit more techie. And I generally, with some clients in the past, feel like their in-house PR team thought that we would just ring up a journalist and ask for a link without any sort of story or just sort of ring them up and say, beep, beep, boop, boop, because we were just a bit more computer nerdy and not that we were people and that we knew and understood about how to… I don’t think they understood that we knew what journalists wanted and we knew how to speak to journalists and that sort of thing just takes time to prove and you have to take small steps. And they might say, okay, you can only speak to these amount of journalists or this type of journalist. But you go, okay, fine. And you do that. And then you show that you can do that. And then you push for a bit more and a bit more. And I think some of the biggest successes we’ve had is initially we weren’t, I think for one brand, we were only allowed to talk to bloggers. This was when sort of blog linking was effective. And that was like, that’s fine, but this isn’t really helping for SEO anymore, we need to speak to more. But because we did so well on bloggers, they sort of like, okay, we trust you. And we then could only speak to like a small section of lifestyle sites, and then we could push and push. And then eventually, we just had like carte blanche to speak to whoever we wanted to. I think media sharing is a huge part of like the evidence that you can give to a in-house PR team to show that you know who you’re talking to in terms of the titles and the relevancy and the people at those titles. But I think once you’ve gained that trust, then the relationship suddenly blossoms and it’s wonderful because then you’re helping the PR team sort of achieve what they want to as well, which is to get all these great messages and land all this good coverage which makes them look great, makes the brand look great and everyone’s a winner. It is absolutely achievable and I think once everyone just realises we’re all on the same team, then it’s fine. I tend to find that we get in good relationships with the in-house PR team quite quickly and then they’ll start to say, oh, you should be introduced to our PR agency and that does all, not so much now, but in the past has felt a a bit tense because, you know, obviously there’s a thing like people don’t want work taken away from them and if budgets shrink and it’s like, well, you know, which agency would you pick? It can feel a bit competitive perhaps, but we’ve got like an ethos here at Propellernet of just always being professional and respectful and we share media to make things as easy as possible to work with everyone else and it’s been all right, I think.

Steve Baker:
You’re right. I think there’s definitely, that’s really well explained. Thank you. There’s challenges there, but ultimately it can work. And when it works, it’s a beautiful thing because everyone should be, if done right, kind of trying to achieve the same thing just with different KPIs at the end of it. Moving on from that, although similar ground, what would be your advice? Now you’re an experienced, I’m loath to use the word old, far from it, but you know, an experienced old hand in the digital PR world. What would be your advice for people who are either starting out in digital PR or they work in traditional PR like I did and are looking to make the switch to digital?

Stephanie Finch:
I think what I’ve learned myself, it was coming into, because I had to sort of retro learn traditional PR because I only knew about link first PR basically and then had to learn like what was a product sent out or what does DPS mean, double page spread. So you have to sort of, I had to relearn or sort of retro learn rather traditional PR because I only knew the new and cool way and I think I got a bit excited like well you know I know the new stuff that’s going on and I’m sort of cutting edge on this and this is the way forward and it was really exciting as a young person starting out in the career, you’re a young person starting out in your career in a young industry and that felt really really cool starting out now, the industry, digital PR industry is already sort of semi-established. But what I would say is my advice is just to not feel safe in it because it will keep changing. I think about all the different sorts of link building and evolution of creative work that we’ve done has been huge. So I think when TikTok came out, Lou obviously works in teams, she was first on it, all over it. And I, as a lady over 30, was like, I don’t think that’s for me. I can’t keep up with this social media anymore. I don’t want to. And then quickly realised that would be detrimental to my career because that’s where people are, that’s where everyone is, and if you want to stay on top of how people view brands or politicians, how they consume news, what the general vibe is out there, you have to be where the people are. So trying to have all my data and that’s fine, but I just think as well as if you’re trying to make the switch, you’ve got to embrace everything, all the changes that are going on because how we consume news and use the internet to purchase things and read stories is changing, like AI obviously is the most recent massive shakeup that’s happening and we’re still working that out. But it’s just feeling comfortable with change and knowing that the internet will change, of course, and develop and evolve. But ultimately, people will make things that people want to buy and we can help market those in effective ways. And maybe you’ll have to relearn things from scratch. I think staying humble is quite a good piece of advice, even however far on you get. And just knowing that you’re never going to know it all.

Steve Baker:
That’s great advice. And it is so fast changing, but I do think that people kind of are very quick to react or overreact to things. So the whole AI development and I remember like faffing about with Google Glass when that came out, like this is going to be big guys. And we sort of were convincing a client to do like a campaign around it. And obviously that dropped off. I’m not saying I will, cause it won’t, but it’s like, you know, these hot takes where it’s like. Yeah, it’s just going to completely eradicate the industry in some way, I just don’t believe to be true. I wanted to round off, you’ve been brilliant as always there, but round off, and I’m very intrigued to know what you’re going to say for this one, but what’s your favourite campaign you’ve ever worked on?

Stephanie Finch:
I love that. I was trying enormously to think of one we worked on together to reminisce about. I think the one that sprung to mind the most was when we reintroduced Pine Martins. Well, we didn’t, but our client reintroduced Pine Martins to The Forest. But we had some really funny photos of quite angry, they’re quite evil looking Pine Martins and outreaching that was quite funny. But that was by the by. I think my favourite campaign. Could you guess? I’ll be honest, if you’re right, which one I’m going to use?

Steve Baker:
I was going to say maybe Sands of the Indian Ocean.

Stephanie Finch:
Yeah, absolutely right. Because it just felt like in my career, that was like the proper turning point of going from PR for SEO through to like, okay, this is the digital PR thing. We’re doing a really cool creative story. So for those who don’t know about it, we did a campaign for Kuoni, where the brief was about, they sell to all of the, oh my god, where is it? In the Indian Ocean, they sell to all the places in the Indian Ocean, so it’s the Seychelles, the Maldives, La Reunion, and they are all sort of beautiful tropical islands, and they all look the same, and it was like, how can we differentiate them? Um, so they all look the same on the top cause they’re nice crystal sandy beaches and blue waters, but we look, we got sand and we literally had people in the resorts that worked at Kuoni Resorts ship us over sand. There was a few custom issues. And then we got a photographer who I’d found through like a Nikon photography competition who did microscopic photos to take photos of them. And then the sand from the different beaches all looked very different to each other. And we went out with a photo story. And the client was very brave because no digital PR agency was suggesting this kind of magnitude of work for a story. We were just doing feature pitching and tips and advice previous to that or a blogger competition. So this was a bit of a shake up and a bit more money, but it went everywhere and it went wild. And it was some of that realisation of like, yes, this is what we should be doing. This is where it’s going.

Steve Baker:
Yeah, I’m glad I guessed correctly because that was an amazing campaign. Steph, we’re out of time. We’re out of time. Believe it or not, our chats always fly past. Thank you so much for joining us. Fascinating.