How to easily log in to local links through digital PR

Local newspapers will link to anything. Seriously.

Have you crunched the numbers and discovered that people in this state pay more lifetime taxes than anyone else?

They will report it:

Did you find that their city has the worst train delays in the country?

Yes, they will override it:

Even if your data point is fairly unremarkable, like their city ranking 37th among the best cities for millennials (what does that mean?), they still seem to cover it:

In fact, judging by the backlinks to many of these campaigns, local tabloid journalists love to compare how their fields are doing when it comes to…well, just about anything.

even this piece Regarding the cities with the longest waiting times for driving tests in the UK, links from 58 referring domains were collected, most of which were from local newspapers:

How can you leverage this fact to gain links? By using what I like to call tabloid technology.

Let’s face it: this is the hardest part. If ideas that resonated with local journalists were so easy to come by, we’d all be launching one hot PR campaign after another…

That said, the themes with the most successful ideas I’ve seen seem to fall into one of two categories:

• Evergreen theme. Taxes, potholes – local matters always It’s also possible that caring about this makes them a little angry.
• hot topics. Local elections, seasonal events — things that people are interested in right now, and things that local reporters are eager to cover.

Here are some evergreen topic ideas, courtesy of ChatGPT:

You can also use content browser Find well-performing activities on evergreen themes and draw inspiration from them.

For example, if you search for pages about “taxes” and filter those pages that contain links from over 100 referring domains, a list of countries where you must pay a tourist tax will pop up:

My guess is that if you mapped out the countries with the lowest and highest “tourist taxes” and contacted reporters in each country, you would get some coverage.

If you’re looking for trending topics, Google Trends and Google News are great sources.

We use a number of techniques, from monitoring news sources on the fly to conducting research using Google News to understand the types of topics previously reported at certain times of the year.

You can also use the growth indicator from Ahrefs keyword browser Find trending topics.

For example, we searched for a boring topic like “food” in the UK, set the growing period to the last three months, and sorted it from highest to lowest. Immediately, a hot topic stood out: searches related to Christmas food in major supermarkets in the UK:

It doesn’t take a genius to start coming up with potential local events here:

• Comparing how much average households spend on Christmas food in different parts of the UK
• Compare the most popular Christmas foods in different parts of the UK.
• Compare how many families in different parts of the UK will rely on food banks to provide Christmas dinner. (I know this is a grim topic, but highlighting social issues like this is what journalism is all about!)

Before you think “But Josh…I’m not that creative!”…the truth is that ChatGPT came up with all of these ideas:

My advice is to brainstorm as many ideas as possible and involve the whole team. Even if an idea sounds terrible, write it down. The more ideas you have, the greater the chance that one or two of them will work!

Having an idea is great, but what unique data can you get from it? Where does it come from?

Matt Diggity recently shared some great resources with me:

For government databases, you can access usa.gov for each state. Data.gov is another option. UK data services are equivalent to the UK. Eurostat is very useful to the rest of the EU. Statistics Canada is for…yes, Canada. Internationally, the World Bank’s open data and the United Nations’ data are treasure troves. The Pew Research Center is great for studying social issues, opinions, and demographic trends. FBI Crime Data Browser is great for crime statistics. The CDC is great for health data.

take this event people from over there digital softwareFor example. They pulled data from the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) to find out which areas of the UK have the shortest waiting times for driving tests, and which areas have the highest pass rates:

The campaign received backlinks from 59 websites…

…including many local newspapers:

You can even combine material from multiple sources…

That’s exactly what Darren Kingman created this event Plot lifetime taxes paid by US state (see the Methods section for its source):

The campaign received links to 188 websites:

But relying on existing data isn’t always feasible. Sometimes you have to go out and get your own data.

This may sound scary, but it doesn’t have to be…

For example, Amanda Walls, SEO and digital PR executive cedar digitalused a simple Freedom of Information request to compile the data for this article Britain’s illegal vaping hotspots:

The campaign received links from 72 referring domains and was featured in a number of online newspapers:

If you’re not sure where (or how) to get the data for your activity, try asking ChatGPT:

Just make sure to publish everything you find on a journalist-friendly page, including all your data, sources, methods, and ideally some visual assets they can use.

Here are some examples:

Now that you’ve extracted the data and have something interesting to share, it’s time to do so.

The best person to contact here will depend on your activity and the nature of your data. For example, the Driving Test Index campaign I mentioned earlier found that these are the best areas for passing your driving test:

Journalists representing these areas are obviously the people you should contact at this event…

watching backlink Ahrefs coverage of the campaign, it’s clear that’s exactly what the people behind the campaign have done, as the first link I saw was from the Northumberland Gazette:

(FYI for those not familiar with British geography, according to the data, Blyth is one of the best places to pass your driving test and is located in Northumberland.)

How do you find these publications and journalists? As easy as searching (place name) newspaper…

…then look for the name of the reporter you want to contact:

If you click on their profile, their email address (or at least their social media profile) will be listed – so it’s usually easy to get in touch with them:

If that doesn’t work, try putting their name and website in Email Finder Just like a hunter. (It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try!)

You can also insert any newspaper website into content browser Find out which journalists are currently most active. Just sort the Authors tab by the number of pages they published in the past 30 days.

This speeds up discovery and ensures you don’t waste time contacting reporters who no longer work for the publication or rarely write for it.

Here is an example of the type of email you should send, provided by Darren Kingman (root number):

There’s another one from Amanda Walls (cedar digital):

Does it work for you?

Have questions? contact me X or LinkedIn.