Table of Contents
Many are realizing that old-fashioned link building just isn’t enough these days.
Therefore, there has been a shift in how brands and agencies are thinking about building links. The big move is towards “digital PR.”
One of the brands making this switch has been Clearlink. So, I was able to chat with Clearlink’s Director of Digital PR, Sage Singleton to get a sense for why this is happening and how it’s impacted their agency.
If you are unfamiliar, Clearlink is a marketing agency that owns and operates several consumer comparison web properties like Highspeedinternet.com and Reviews.com.
In this conversation, you’ll find some amazing insights from Sage on how you should be thinking about digital PR, but also some great examples about how Clearlink is winning.
Main Actionable Takeaways
Here are 5 major takeaways from our conversation:
1. Broaden Your Digital PR Goals Beyond Backlinks
Don’t be afraid to reevaluate your team’s KPIs. Sage recommends including brand awareness metrics, media coverage, unlinked mentions, and audience engagement (e.g., social media growth or newsletter signups).
You can even use Google Trends to monitor brand search volume after campaigns to measure awareness spikes.
Start tracking these alongside backlinks to showcase the full impact of digital PR campaigns.
2. Combine Data with Timely News Hooks for High-Impact Campaigns
Create a calendar of industry news or policy changes. Pair this with existing content or tools your brand already offers and build campaigns around localized or visual data. This is how Sage had so much success with their Affordability Connectivity Program impact data study.
We mention this a bit more in our newsjacking post as well.
3. Prioritize Link Quality Over Quantity
Move away from tactics like mass guest posting or syndicated links with little SEO value. For instance, you could get one link that syndicates a hundred times, but will anyone click on those links?
Sage talks about resource link building and utility link building, as well as broken link building still being a supportive part of their tactical mix.
4. Address Underperforming Campaigns Quickly
Sage’s workflow for campaign evaluation looks something like this:
If a campaign isn’t gaining traction within two weeks:
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- Analyze email open rates to tweak subject lines.
- Rewrite pitches for clarity and relevance.
- Consult a colleague to “gut-check” the campaign’s angle.
5. Promote Creative Thinking
Practice creative thinking by challenging your team (or yourself) with exercises that connect seemingly unrelated ideas. This builds the ability to think on your feet and develop innovative angles for campaigns, newsjacking, or content creation. Use brainstorming sessions or even improvisational games to keep creativity sharp.
When Sage interviewed for her job, they asked “what are some similarities between pigs and homeowner’s insurance?”
Transcript
Below is transcription of our chat. It has been slightly edited for readability.
Vince: We had a chance to talk a little bit prior to this a few months ago, and then again closer to the podcast. And what was really interesting to me is your role, position at Clearlink.
Clearlink itself is kind of like an agency, kind of like an in house agency. So I’d love to start there. Let’s talk about what you do and what Clearlink is. I think I’ll give a good baseline for what we want to discuss today.
Can you explain what Clearlink does?
Sage Singleton: Sure. Yeah. So, high level Clearlink is a marketing agency that owns and operates several web properties. I am the director of digital PR over one of their divisions called internet brands, and those brands are made up of different consumer comparison websites.
And so if you think of Expedia, you go to Expedia, you type in your destination, and it gives you all of the possible brands and locations that you could go.
We do the same thing with telco brands. So internet, if you’re trying to compare internet, we give you your options, mobile services, streaming, cable options. And so very simply put consumer comparison websites and My team is responsible for outreach, PR, and link building to those properties.
Vince: Yeah, great explanation.
I mean, I think the thing that stood out to me, too, when we were talking about before this was your team, Used to be called the outreach team, right? Uh, now you’re kind of more of a digital PR team. What, what, can you explain a little bit about that kind of transition?
Why did you change the name of your team from “Outreach” to “Digital PR”?
Sage Singleton: Sure. So I’ve been at Clearlink for eight years.
I started as an outreach specialist, building links for one of their websites. Became the outreach manager, and then maybe three or four years into my tenure as the manager, we decided to make a whole team change to digital PR. And at first, it kind of felt like semantics, but the more we thought about it, it was like the, the business of outreach to digital PR has shifted.
And so, maybe I’ll just define how we think about the difference between outreach and digital PR.
So, I think outreach is more the process of building links for the purpose of SEO, building links to drive link equity, and doing outreach to third-party websites with the intent of building a backlink.
Digital PR, a byproduct of digital PR efforts, is still a backlink, but I like to think of it as more of creating a digital footprint.
Digital PR is the art of promoting a brand.
It creates that digital footprint and ensures your brand is everywhere it needs to be online. And so for me and my team, initially our KPIs with the outreach team were just backlinks.
And then with digital PR, it’s evolved to so much more than that. Because, like I mentioned before, you can. run a digital PR campaign and drive backlinks, but you’re doing other things with that. You’re building brand awareness. You’re getting brand mentions, potentially broadcast segments on traditional TV and radio.
And while those might not leave a backlink, it still is leaving a digital impression on consumers and audiences. And so. As we drove more impact, and as we drove more results through our campaigns, that really cemented our need to change it from just the outreach team to the digital PR team.
Vince: So is this something that came about because of shifts in the industry, because of shifts, you know, internally?
What really brought the change about?
Was the name change due to a shift in the industry?
Sage Singleton: Yeah, I would say kind of a little, a little bit of everything.
I do think digital PR is on the rise as people see the impact it can have on a business, not just on the SERPs, the search engines result pages, but on the The brand itself, I like to think of digital PR is kind of this intersection between SEO and traditional PR.
You have SEO. That’s all rooted in the search engines and Google or other search engines and then public relations offline can help build a brand, but together you do both.
And so I think part of it was the industry with traditional link building tactics like guest posting or link reclamation becoming trickier and maybe Google catching onto it more that also we wanted to be one, in line with Google best practices, but also like what’s best for the consumer.
If we’re creating content that answers consumers, questions and provides entertainment, education, and information, that just felt more digital PR.
It does more than just build a backlink for the SERPs. And so that was kind of our thinking.
I don’t know if that answered your question, but that was a little bit of everything that went into our decision.
Vince: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot there, and I think a lot of people are kind of coming to the realization that you did as well with helpful content, but even sooner now, you know, closer to when we’re doing this podcast, the Google leak, you know, it just seems like there’s so much that has gone into the algorithm and where Google is kind of pushing forward towards where the brand itself is such a big piece of the marketing strategy, the digital marketing strategy.
And it sounds like, one of the things you said was, you know, creating content on guest posts sites, like that kind of stuff, that was bread and butter for, and still is for a lot of people, like I constantly get inundated with emails like that.
But, I’ve done some analyses on our site now where it’s just like those sites are the ones that just got tanked by the helpful content update.
They’re the ones that exist solely to manufacture links and sell links (and, these link exchange networks.)
And so it seems like Google’s getting smarter. So I totally agree with you. I mean, the strategy seems to be digital PR these days.
Is digital PR the only link building strategy today?
Sage Singleton: It depends where your site is at in its life stage. I think some of those more traditional bread and butter link building tactics might still work if you’re just a start site that’s starting out.
You need backlinks, you need to start ranking organically. Um, I definitely think you should still follow white hat tactics, but as our brands have been around and they’re evolving, we needed more than just backlinks. We needed this.
It’s like I mentioned, more the PR public relations and brand building to continue to grow and scale.
Vince: Yeah, it does definitely seem to be that it’s easier for the bigger brands to get into digital PR because people know who the brand is and it’s, they, they probably reap the benefits even more. Because, you know, if you see Nike has a new study about whatever, like, it’s more likely to get spread than some random footwear company, right?
I’m curious about when you say kind of some of these traditional link building tactics to kind of get things going. And it sounds like you don’t really do those or need to do those anymore at this point. But like, what are some of those that you think still work today?
What are some of the traditional link building tactics that still work today?
Sage Singleton: I think guest posting or contributed content where it makes sense is still a valid tactic.
Resource link building, so offering existing helpful content or link insertion. If it’s done genuinely, if you genuinely have a resource that would add value to another existing article or piece of content or resource page, I think that’s a more bread and butter link building tactic that still works.
We’ve done what we’ve called utility link building, where we reach out to dot gov dot edu.
Sites to add our content as a useful resource or utility for people to use. I think that can still be valuable, and then broken link building and link reclamation.
I think those are tactics that I think they can be hard to scale, but they still work and they’re still valuable.
And so I think those need to be integrated into your framework or quarterly or annual strategy as just a foundational approach to link building.
Vince: Yeah, I like that. I, you know, if you’re an agency it seems like they’re not necessarily the things, tactics you can build a whole product offering off of, but they’re kind of what you said, like maybe it’s a retainer and you’re, you’re, you’re just saying, I’m going to build you X amount of blanks.
And like, those are things you can kind of do around the edges to shore up, you know, some of that authority and relevancy.
Sage Singleton: They’re just good to integrate into your broader strategy.
Vince: Let’s just quickly define kind the wrong way to do some of those.
What’s the wrong way to do some of these traditional methods?
Sage Singleton: Sure.
I mean, I get pitches all the time of “dear Sage, we have this link. Will you put it on your blog? We think it’s a good fit.”
And they clearly haven’t done their research to know that one.
When they reach out to my personal Gmail, I don’t have a blog. It’s like, well, what do you want me to put it? So, I mean, I think that’s the wrong way to do it. Not doing your research, lack of personalization and not a clear-cut ask.
When people ask me to link my blog, I’m like, “what blog?”
So I think that’s the wrong way to do it.
I think you can still ask for link insertion, but you need to do your personalization, do your homework, and tell me why.
Why should I take the time to update an existing article with your content? How is it gonna benefit me, my audience, my users?
And if you can be persuasive, I’ll do it, but you need to, you need to sell me on that.
Vince: Yeah. I must feel like there are more people nowadays that get the game, you know, like site owners who understand SEO enough, whereas back in the day, you’d have a higher success rate with any of those.
And you wouldn’t even need to really explain the benefits because they’d just be thrilled that somebody was reaching out to them or thrilled that their brand might be mentioned on some post or something that you’re doing.
So yeah, it seems to just be that people are getting more sophisticated.
Sage Singleton: Yeah. And and there are more people in the space. And so there’s lots of consumer comparison websites.
So, why should someone choose the clients I represent over someone else?
And that’s where I think it’s important to really know your unique value proposition and why this link is important.
I mean, we, as link-building experts, know the value of a backlink SEO and equity, but from the audience perspective, why do, why they should interact and engage with your link is important to define.
Vince: Yeah, yeah, well, so that’s a maybe a good transition to just kind of more broadly like the digital PR stuff that is potentially working and how we can create valuable content that’s going to cause people to want to link to your stuff.
Let’s get into that a bit. What are some of these kind of effective digital PR tactics now that you’re employing with with Clearlink now that you’ve kind of shifted away from more of the traditional outreach stuff?
What are some effective digital PR tactics working for Clearlink?
Sage Singleton: We didn’t reinvent the wheel, but content promotion and content marketing, creating newsworthy linkable data driven content has really been kind of our bread and butter lately as a digital PR team.
So that format can vary. It could vary from a survey to a white paper to a map, but the idea is creating content that has proprietary data, maybe two data points merged together to show a different perspective.
Some statistic, really anchoring content and themes to data statistics.
I think that looking for a new take on maybe an existing problem or solution, and then being able to craft an email and promote it to the right audiences has been a really effective digital PR strategy.
And we’ll do that through email outreach, but also looking at other places, like I mentioned at the beginning, where do people live online, is there an engaged community on, in a Facebook group that we should share this content with
And so it’s like everywhere online that these audiences live, where can we put our content that will, that they’ll engage with, that they’ll like to, yeah, that’s kind of how we’re thinking about it.
Vince: Yeah. A lot in there too, to dissect.
I think at this point, everybody understands. Well, that’s probably too sweeping of a statement, but there’s the news outreach, right?
Like you create this data-driven post, and you’re going to reach out to general news platforms.
But then there’s also what you said, where it’s like the forums and the kind of alternative outreach or content promotion platforms that I feel like people in the digital PR and SEO realm, maybe link building realm. Some get too hyper-focused on just site links and blog links.
But we’re really talking now about building your brand, building brand awareness, and all that stuff can get.
All of a sudden the map is open, right? Like you’re, you’re now talking about Facebook groups and these places. So let’s talk a little bit about how you find those audiences and find those specific forums and alternative.
How do you find alternative audiences to distribute your content?
Sage Singleton: I’ll start out by saying that I realized that the link impact from a social site isn’t as maybe as strong as a link on the New York Times, for example.
But when we’re talking about just PR and reach, we still recognize that there’s engaged audiences in a Facebook group, for example.
And so if we’re doing a piece about, I’ll just take my mom or myself as an example. I’m a mom.
And if I was creating a piece about or like from that perspective, let’s say I represent a parenting company or a product. Where, where do, where do, where do other moms go for information? Well, I’m part of Facebook groups.
I have certain publications that I follow.
I have influencers on Instagram that I follow.
And so I like to put myself in that audience’s shoes.
If I were moving and I needed information about the best moving companies? Well, where do I go?
Maybe I go to the neighborhood Next Door app.
And so I think the advice for people who are doing outreach for companies is think about your desired user and where do they live online?
Who do they follow?
Which publications do they read?
Which influencers are making a mark?
Which groups are they a part of and then getting involved in those groups so you can one see the conversation, understand the questions that are being asked, who’s answering those questions, and then inserting your brand strategically into that conversation as a genuine resource.
Maybe my parenting example was bad, but that was just trying to illustrate I think of where I go to get information as a new mom. That can be applied to any audience if you put yourself in their shoes.
Vince: Yeah. I mean, that’s great advice. Do you run the risk of it being inauthentic as a brand?
Like you see this on Reddit all the time where like people are being too promotional, right? These days, maybe it’s a bad example because these days it seems to be kind of a crapshoot and it’s all over the place with Reddit and some of those forums and there are overly, you know, promotional, but let’s use like maybe Quora or something else.
Maybe a Facebook group. If all of a sudden you see, you know, Huggies guide to diaper rash pop up on there from the Huggies account, like you’re obviously going to be like, all right, maybe I won’t click on this. This is weird that, you know, so how do you stay kind of under the radar enough. I mean, I remember, and I can tell you this: I remember when I was with Siege, we had fake Reddit accounts, right?
Like I have an alternative one and I have my Vince Nero one.
So the, like, if I need to like throw something out there just to like, see how it performs, right. Like it can do that. Is that what you recommend?
How do you engage with audiences on online forums and other channels without it feeling inauthentic?
Sage Singleton: You run a risk by creating like aliases that if it’s online, you can probably get caught.
So I think it really comes down to you need to be genuine. I think if there are channels and mediums we’re not going to, we’ve strategically decided not to pursue because it’s just not a good brand fit. Sure. It could be a really great backlink.
But it’s not, if someone can see through it, I don’t think that’s worth the risk from a reputation standpoint.
You might have that link equity and that might impact your, like your rankings or your traffic.
But if it damages your brand and that trust, that’s really hard to build back. And so I think you need as a brand or as an agency need to think about like, is the juice worth the squeeze?
And I think you really have to come back to audience first off, is this resource genuinely going to provide value to my audience?
And if the answer is yes, then go for it.
And if not, I think you really need to assess if it’s worth damaging your brand’s reputation and trust and persona to go after that.
Vince: Yeah, well, that’s another great transition point there because we talked a bit about this offline KPIs, right? Like, now that you’ve made this switch, I think that’s one of the biggest things that comes out of this, especially for me.
It’s a challenge talking about digital PR.
I feel like there’s still like the US is maybe a few years behind. Like the UK has been a little more sophisticated in the digital PR tactics, but I also think they just call it digital PR. And a lot of people in the US call it content marketing and link building.
So I think one of the hurdles for a lot of people getting into digital PR and kind of doing what you did at Clearlink, which is making that switch from the traditional link building methods into digital PR is yes, you can get high DA links, high DR links, but. You know, there’s a lot of challenges there, right?
Like sometimes the failure rate is probably higher in a digital PR campaign as much as you want to safeguard it. But then also like outside of just links, it gets harder to come up with convincing metrics for some of these like softer goals like brand, you know, brand awareness and being able to tie a single campaign to a brand awareness like, you know, it’s very challenging.
What are your KPIs for digital PR campaigns?
Sage Singleton: So, I mean, first and foremost, our KPIs are still backlinks, and I would say backlinks and coverage.
And how we define coverage is broadcast segments: so TV and radio, maybe unlinked brand mentions, interviews conducted, and then newsletter or podcast inclusions.
I think that can be a big umbrella for coverage.
And so, the number 1 KPI is the amount of coverage you are in month over month, quarter over quarter.
And then also looking at traffic. So, did the backlinks you earn send referral traffic?
Then, we monitor organic traffic and direct traffic. Direct, like you said, is hard.
That’s much more correlation to causation.
And I would say you should look at that maybe over a six-month or annual period instead of month over month.
But we do notice trends if we had a successful campaign and then go to Google Trends and type in our brand name, we have seen very strongly correlated spikes between a digital PR campaign and direct traffic gains.
And so those are the top KPIs, but then we also look at, and this depends Campaign by campaign, and it’s up to my digital PR specialist to kind of set what the intent of the campaign is. But we will also we’ve had campaigns that have grown owned audiences.
So, as part of the campaigns, we’ve seen a direct growth in social media followers, email subscribers, and push notification subscribers.
And so that can be a KPI of a digital PR campaign.
We ran a campaign a couple years ago that it grew our YouTube subscriber following so much that we were then able to monetize the platform of YouTube.
And so that was huge.
And that campaign was actually pretty low in link numbers, but the impact on the owned audience growth was really impressive. And so that can be a KPI.
We’ve looked at clicks and impressions in Google Search Console.
What keywords is this piece helping the site rank for?
And then we’ve also looked at just number of interview placements.
Because I think if you look at those from the lens of EEAT, um, or Expertise Authority Trust, that can also impact the overall business.
But like you said, the challenge is, in most cases, digital PR is not directly revenue driving, and so it’s hard to show stakeholders who want to see revenue the direct impact. And so it’s much more like the broader picture of what is this doing long term? How is this safeguarding your site from potential future algorithm updates, building that brand?
So yeah, that’s, that’s kind of my long winded answer, but those are some of the things we look at to define success.
Vince: Yeah, there’s a, again, your answers are great, Sage. There’s a lot in there. I’m trying to take notes as we go along. So you said one thing about EEAT.
I thought that was a really good kind of connector for a lot of people, maybe who are still stuck in the past, right?
In the, the older ways, even like the helpful content thing, that might be a good way to convince your agency or brand to invest in digital PR.
I think the other thing, though, is, and I wanted to get your take on this, is like, it’s less of a quantity game and more of a quality game, it seems to me. Or at least that’s the message I’ve been trying to give.
And that seems to be a hurdle for some people, right? Like you’re expecting hundreds of links, maybe from your link building team, and they only deliver 20, but they’re really highly relevant, you know, and then they also give you podcasts and reviews and all these other things. But like, if all you want are links, and they’re not hitting those numbers, it’s like that becomes a tough conversation to have, especially for an agency.
What’s your take on link quantity vs link quality?
Sage Singleton: It’s easy to think that big numbers equal big returns, and I mean, ideally, we would deliver both quantity and quality.
But what I like to tell is to tell my team and the stakeholders who are looking for numbers is, okay, well, we could go get, we could go find one link that syndicates hundreds of times, but then let’s look at the impact of that was, did anyone click on those links and drive traffic to our sites?
What was the domain authority?
How much work did it take to get that? Because there’s a lot of sites. And what are these sites?
What does the link neighborhood look like?
Do we even want to be on these sites? Because sure, if you just want link numbers, I have a list of places that I know syndicate that I could go get one link at 100 syndications, but the impact is not going to be nearly as meaningful as maybe 10 links on industry-specific high domain authority, high referral driving sites.
And so I think it’s up to the manager or the client representative to tell that story and educate people who are less familiar with the impact of link building.
But, I think you can show this one link drove 500 referrals versus these hundred links drove 10 referrals.
If you want eyes on your website and interactions with your website, I think that traffic time on the page, even maybe click-through rate, those numbers look more impressive if you can paint that picture for the stakeholders.
Vince: Yeah, 100%. So I want to go back to 1 thing that you mentioned that was really interesting.
I hadn’t thought about this. So, like, when you’re thinking about measuring voice and measuring brand awareness that you’re coming from these campaigns. You mentioned using Google Trends to actually look at how your brand is trending.
I hadn’t thought of that and I’m curious. Let’s start there. So your brand, you do a digital PR campaign and it’s just a matter of looking at how your brand is trending in that same time frame of a digital PR campaign.
How do you use Google Trends to measure the impact of digital PR?
Sage Singleton: Yeah. So one of the key studies I ran, we have a website called highspeedinternet.com. It’s a consumer comparison site to compare internet providers.
And we ran, I think, 15 campaigns in a year, just consistent campaigns. They did relatively well each campaign. I’d have to look back at the exact numbers, but probably 30 to 50 links per campaign.
And when I typed in highspeedinternet.com into Google trends, there was a clear correlation between spikes in trending search volume and when we ran those campaigns.
And like I said, there were hills and valleys.
It was not consistent, but it was definitely correlated enough to see that before we ran a campaign, no one was directly Googling highspeedinternet.com.
After we ran a campaign that got some media publicity, it got some links, it started to rank.
We did have search volume for our brand name, and so that was kind of another indicator. This is at the time when we started to switch from outreach to digital PR that got me thinking, okay, we can do more than just help a page rank in Google.
We can help drive brand awareness to a site.
I don’t think that’s the only way to measure share a voice and brand awareness, because like I said, at least in this example, we’re still kind of up and down on the consistency, but yeah, I do think that is a way to measure the impact is are people googling your brand directly because they heard about it somewhere online.
Vince: Would you do brand search or search terms?
Sage Singleton: In this case, I feel like they were pretty similar because I wanted the direct like highspeedinternet.com because with a domain like that, I did not want to conflate that with just the term high speed internet.
So I made sure I was only searching for the name of the brand.
Vince: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s kind of why I asked. I think, um, yeah, I mean, super interesting. I want to bring up one of the campaigns that I know you’ve worked on because I thought it was a really interesting way to kind of think about digital PR.
I’m going to probably screw this up and maybe let you, but I’ll give you the gist of it. And it was essentially, we were talking about kind of doing some newsjacking and this was kind of like this planned approach that you had where you had some information on a, one of your sites around where you can get, where people could get affordable internet, high speed internet.
Can you explain a reactive PR campaign for Whistleout?
Sage Singleton: I know which piece you’re talking about. I’ll give it a good summary of it.
One of our websites, whistleout.com, they are basically a search engine to compare mobile plans and internet plans:that’s what they do.
So existing content on the site talks about the best mobile and internet plans and the cheapest, best mobile plans, most expensive internet plans.
So that content already existed.
And then back in April or May, Congress made an announcement that they were ending a program called the Affordable Connectivity Program.
And this federally run program basically gave subsidies for low-income Americans that they could put towards their internet bill.
So Congress ended this. It’s called ACP, Affordable Connectivity Program, which essentially made it so I think 23 million households in America would no longer have access to high-speed internet because they could no longer afford it.
So we knew this was coming; it was in the news consistently, and we’re a website that Has a tool where you can go in and search internet providers by zip code and then sort by price.
And so that seemed like a beneficial solution for people who, there’s 23 million households who are going to be out of high speed internet. They need a low income option.
We have the tool and the tech to give that to them so they can compare.
That already existed. And then we also wanted to kind of visualize and map out.
There’s 23 million households in America who are losing internet access.
What does that look like by state?
That was the news hook that made it relevant and local by state. geographic region. And so what we did was we did it twofold: we created a net new piece of content where we looked at the number of households by state that was losing their ACP funding and then that was the new piece of content, the new data-driven map.
We also included our widget, the tool that allows people to sort by price.
And we pitched that to the media saying, “Hey, 23 million Americans are losing their internet access. There’s 5 million in Utah that are using their access. We want to share this useful resource with your readers, if they’re impacted so they can stay connected as internet is part of everything we do.”
And the piece was incredibly successful.
We earned over 250 links for that piece. But more importantly, yes, the links were great but It also hit home.
It had the markers of a good campaign. It was relevant. It was timely. It was localized. But what was really impressive was the interactions on the site; the amount of referral traffic we got for that piece and the onsite clicks to other pages—which to me indicated that not only was the story interesting enough for third party journalists to write about it, but it also provided their audiences with something useful.
And like I said, we measured that by the time spent on page, the referral traffic and the number of clicks and conversions on site.
Vince: Yeah, I mean, it’s a great strategy. They’re kind of taking it one step further to is like what I really liked about it is that you were able to position your site as a solution to this big problem, right?
Like the affordable connectivity program is ending. So it was like, okay, what? What to do next? What should people do next? Right? And like, if you can position your service, your site, your client in that, that hole there, that’s where you start to get the real gains, not only from links, but then it, you know, you can actually drive traffic, qualified customers and visitors to your site.
Um, and I think that’s something that you don’t get when you’re doing more of the traditional link building. Like you can’t position it that way.
Sage Singleton: No, it’s, it’s hard to do that with one link in one guest post even if it’s a well placed link on a well placed domain. But if you’re, if you’re talking about scale of your efforts, I think content promotion, digital PR, you just get more bang for your buck because you can, you can just reach more audiences with one piece of content.
Vince: Yeah. Let’s take the flip side of this because You know, we, we both, it sounds like you and I have got a very similar kind of background.
We both kind of started as outreach. I, when I was at Siege, we had these like kind of quasi-roles where it was like outreach plus content creator. But I did a ton of outreach and became a manager and wasn’t really doing it as much.
But I think you can learn a ton from that traditional outreach mindset and take that into digital PR. So I’m curious what some of your takeaways, if any, from digital, you know, from traditional into digital.
What can traditional link builders learn from Digital PRs?
Sage Singleton: Um, I mean, when I started, I actually spent the bulk of my time guest posting. Um, that’s where I started my link building and link acquisition career, I suppose.
And I guess what I learned from that translates to digital PR, which is being able to take two seemingly unconnected ideas.
So, for example, if I had a domain that I was trying to guest post on and they were like, we like this article idea, or they gave me a topic to write about. Well, how do I fit safety into parenting; being able to take two seemingly unconnected ideas and tie them together?
That was really crucial for guest posting and link building.
But, the same is true for digital PR. Sometimes something is trending in the news or an upcoming event, and you want to insert your brand into that conversation. And it might be a stretch and sometimes it’s too big of a stretch and you just can’t do it.
But other times, if you can get creative, you can make it work. And I like, yeah, I used to do outreach. I have kind of stepped back as the manager of a team now, but I’ll do maybe four or five pieces a year. And I think my having been in the weeds, having done the work, knowing what works, what doesn’t. I’ve also been a copywriter.
And so being on the flip side of that, of like having to write the copy, kind of being able to blend all of that together.
I’m really glad I started as the individual contributor because I’ve done the work. I know what works. And I think that makes me a more effective leader because I can speak from experience.
And I like to do pieces to this day because I know things have changed from when I started eight years ago.
Vince: Yeah, totally. I mean, the, the thing with like pitching, I feel like when you’re in the kind of more traditional outreach versus now, yeah, it just seems like it’s a more authentic thing these days.
So you have to kind of be a little more robotic and like scale it a little more easily. I think when you’re doing kind of the traditional outreach versus we’re reaching out to journalists, you really have to kind of think like them and yeah, approach it really like there’s another person on the other end of it.
That seems to be like my biggest kind of aha moment. But, and then to your, your other point, which I really like is that idea of like getting creative about how you kind of connect the dots, because that’s something I feel like it’s really hard to teach and we’ve played that game here of BuzzStream sometimes, like, cause I was writing this post about content ideation and I was like, how, how far.
Can you get, or do you do it the other way around where it’s like, can you connect these two things and like how quickly and how can you connect these two things?
Sage Singleton: That used to be an interview question I asked! What are all the similarities between pigs and homeowners insurance?
When I was asked that, I was like, what is this question? But it was interesting, there’s no right answer. But it’s the idea of like, can you think on your feet?
And then the other thing that I’ve actually pulled from is, I have a sister who’s in stand up comedy. And so I’ve learned a lot from her about the lessons of improv, where the concept is you never say no, you always build on it.
And so that’s really helpful, actually, with creating content of you might have ideas that aren’t going to work. But if you’re just playing around in this brainstorming phase of. Okay, I’m gonna roll with it and this and that these lessons of improv and thinking on your feet and never saying no and having to work with it.
I actually think they keep your creative juices flowing because you have to think quickly.
And the same goes if you’re on an interview, you might get thrown a curveball question and you just have to be able to improv. I’m going to go with it. And that’s been kind of learning, leaning on those lessons of like the standup improv world has been really helpful as a creative.
Vince: Yeah. Wow. I love that.
Sage Singleton: What’s the common commonality between the two?
Vince: Oh, I don’t, I was trying to think as you were talking, let’s say pigs. They, uh, like to eat trash. They, they, um, they live in a barn. They, I don’t know. I would fail on this interview. I don’t think I’d get hired.
I need some time. What do you, what do you got Sage? And you’ve done this before. What, what are the, some of the clever.
Sage Singleton: I came with an advantage, but I think my answer, when I was asked that question in my interview was something around, like, don’t let like things happen in your house, pigs can trash your house.
They’re messy. So don’t. Don’t wait for the inevitable to have homeowner’s insurance. Like what could happen and prevent accidents. I don’t know. It was really bad, but that’s, I believe
Vince: I love it.
Sage Singleton: At least I had an answer. I was like, okay, I better say something over nothing, you know, eight years later.
Vince: Yeah, that’s great.
Well, I want to wrap it up here. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I know that you, you know, as a manager, you’re in back to back to back meetings, I’m sure. So last thing I want to kind of touch on is this idea as a manager, you know, as a someone that’s doing digital PR, let’s talk just a little bit about what happens when these things underperform and kind of what it takes to a like learn from them.
Like, that’s probably obvious. And I don’t want to call this, like, spinning a bad, you know, report. Like, if stuff doesn’t go well, it doesn’t go well. But, like, you talked a little bit about some of those other self metrics, so maybe it’s that. But let’s talk about what happens when either your team doesn’t perform or your piece doesn’t perform.
What happens if a digital PR campaign doesnt’ perform?
Sage Singleton: Sure. Well, that sucks. That’s not what anyone wants to happen. And yet it does. I would say, I tell my team, first and foremost, you will have pieces that will flop despite your best efforts.
And, and that’s okay as long as you don’t keep making the same mistakes, or at least if we learn from it, which is cliche, but it’s true.
What I would say is like our standard process is if we’re two weeks into outreach and we have no coverage yet we go into BuzzStream and look at open rates.
What do those look like? Because if they’re low, to me, that indicates the subject line wasn’t intriguing.
So could you go fix your subject line? If they’re high, do you need a follow-up?
Do you need to add more information to your follow-up?
Did you send enough emails?
Do you have the right audiences?
I think you can look at all of those like tactical things.
I think we can get caught up in our ideas, and everyone thinks their own ideas are great.
And so I’ll have my team go gut check with someone else. Be like, “okay, you got to gut check me. You got to play devil’s advocate.”
Ask “what is wrong with this piece? What’s not interesting?”
And we’ll do that with another digital PR specialist. You get the expertise. And then I’ll also have someone who’s not in the DPR world, take a look at the piece and just be like, “what are your reactions to this?”
Because it’s interesting for them to say, “Oh yeah, you’re stating the obvious here.” And then sometimes that’s helpful to be like, “Oh, okay, well, what stood out to you?”
Another tactic we’ll do is like a pitch swap. We’ll send our published content piece to someone else and be like, “Hey, will you write the pitch for me? I want to see what you would say versus what I said.”
I think those are some things we’ll do to correct the course.
And then if a piece flops from a link perspective, did it drive traffic? Did it rank for keywords, you know, there’s other metrics we can—like you said, not spin—but find maybe the silver lining in the piece.
And then there are times when pieces just completely flop.
And I had a manager years ago who I did an end-of-year presentation, and I highlighted all of the things that went well this year.
And he said, well, that’s great, but I want to know what went wrong.
And I was really caught off guard, but that’s probably the most impactful piece of feedback I’ve been given because then I looked at the five worst pieces we did that year, what they had in common, and we learned from that.
That became kind of a litmus test of like things to avoid.
And so I think, yeah, if your piece flops, well why?
What were the commonalities and what can you learn from that? And then use that as, like I said, your litmus test for future pieces to avoid those same mistakes.
Vince: Yeah, all great advice. I remember we had like a content review, end of month content review for that reason.
What, what was, what worked, what didn’t work at all. Um, I, I highly recommend that for everybody doing, especially digital PR.
Sage Singleton: And if you’re the outreacher on that team, it’s not fun to be like, what was wrong with my piece. And there’s that improv and you learn the most from that. And so I think that’s what I’ve tried to cultivate on my team is like a team of growth where you can make mistakes.
You can have pieces flop and you need to like get scrappy and do what it takes to like hit your numbers. through a variety of tactics. Yeah.
Vince: Well, let’s leave it there, Sage. A lot to digest in this. Um, like I said, you gave a lot of great answers. What I will do usually with these is also kind of give like a recap.
Um, and this is going to be chock full of some great advice. So Sage, I really appreciate your time.
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