One of the rare benefits of recent years has been the amount of new online trainings that have emerged within the SEO industry as a whole, but especially on the topic of Digital PR. With the recent explosion of the topic, we’ve combined a list of training videos to help you improve your skills.
Some great resources to get you started can be Digital PR Examples and Content Curated.
The Best Sites For Digital PR Webinars
This is a list that we created internally to help with our training and development that we could easily share with new people as they join us. As I was tidying the spreadsheet up a little I figured that it would probably be useful for other people as well – hence why we made this post.
This is a list of some of the best sources for webinars on Digital PR that we’ve found that are regularly updated with brilliant new content. Most aren’t Digital PR specific so they’re also great resources for learning more about SEO or even Digital Marketing as a broader topic. Further down we’ve also created a list of the individual webinars to watch on different sub topics of Digital PR.
The Missing Link is arguably the best source for regular webinars specifically focused on Digital PR and a really wide array of different topics. The webinars with Journalists are especially insightful to help perfect your outreaching. You can also find more of the webinars JBH did before rebranding them to The Missing link.
The Digital PR Summit by Digitaloft
The 2 Summit events that Digitaloft have been put on so far have been both been awesome with a really cool lineup of talks that covers a nice spectrum of Digital PR topics. These are less regular but you get an entire day of free talks when they do come along.
outREACH Online by Verve Search
This was why I had to say mostly free because I couldn’t put this list together without including these talks despite them not technically being free. But they only cost £15 and it comes out at around £2 per talk and all the talks are good and there’s 3-4 of them that I think are pretty must watch regardless of how experienced you are. Plus you get to keep the replay videos if you need to go back and watch them again later.
This is a great archive of talks (isn’t it weird watching talks at events in front of an actual audience!) with a lot of them around the topic of Digital PR and to an even greater extent, SEO.
The Content Marketing Association
Another awesome resource for Digital Marketing, SEO, Content and so on. These webinars are hosted fairly regularly and cover a really broad spectrum of topics that will vary in relevance depending on your exact role. Keep an eye on the staggeringly far in advance schedule as well for what content talks are upcoming.
I suppose Moz’s archive of “Whiteboard Friday’s” are close enough to being webinars for us to include in this list. These talks are usually ten minutes or less making them a super resource if you’re looking for shorter videos on Digital PR and Content topics, but also a great resource if you’re looking to learn about more aspects of SEO.
There isn’t the most expansive archive of talks on Talk About Digital yet, especially when it comes to Digital PR, but there are a good number of interesting Digital PR talks on their upcoming schedule with some brilliant marketers making it another one to keep tabs on.
I was in two minds about including brightonSEO because the archive of replays isn’t free and it’s far from cheap, but if you do have the budget they are a fantastic resource for expanding on your Content and SEO knowledge.
While there are definitely some great talks more specifically about Digital PR and Content, I’ve included The Marketing Meetup because it has such a fantastic catalogue of webinars around topics that Digital PRs should really at least have some background knowledge on, with a new one added every week.
The Best Webinars To Learn Digital PR
These are links to individual webinars which serve as great learning resources for each of the listed sections within Digital PR. I also posted to Twitter a shorter “best of the best” list that covers a bit of everything as a starter point.
Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns – outREACH Online w/ Shannon McGuirk
I feel so bad including a paid webinar in this section, especially as the first one, however I think this talk is must-watch viewing for anyone at any stage of their career, but especially when they’re starting off because I’ve absolutely been a victim of seeing success stories on Social Media and thinking that’s the norm and anything less is a failure. Deep down I probably knew that but seeing someone actually talk in depth about it was so refreshing and just what I needed at that stage of my career. The full pack of replays is £15 but it works out at like £2 per talk and they’re all great and many I’d call must see. As a little bit of a cheat there’s a shorter but also free talk by Shannon on the same topic here.
How To Cut Through The Digital PR Bullshit – JBH Webinar w/ Alex Hickson
This talk has tons of great insight if you’re new to the industry to set your expectations on the right track for what good advice and even bad advice looks like, along with some really useful career progression and promotion tips.
Own The Crisis: Top Confidence Tips For Digital PRs – JBH Webinar w/ Kirsty Hulse
Kirsty’s talks are always amazing when it comes to motivation and confidence tips. Kirsty is a motivational speaker but she also has a background in SEO and running her own agency which gives this talk tremendous context. I think this is a really great talk to not only watch as you’re starting off in the industry but to also go back to if you are feeling low on confidence at any stage.
These are three seperate talks on three different topics but they all tie nicely together as great advice for people who are just starting off in the industry (not to say this is a patronising watch if you’re further in). Lots of really useful tips on what your goals should look like, common misconceptions and more.
Digital PR Overview:
Cutting Through The Noise With Digital PR – Business As Unusual w/ Carrie Rose
Any Carrie Rose talks are essential viewing as far as I’m concerned. This is a great overview discussion on the benefits of Digital PR and what I really like about is that a) it’s more of an unstructured conversation than a traditional talk with slides and b) it’s especially great if you don’t have much knowledge of Digital PR while being the furthest thing from useless for more experienced pro’s.
How To Get Press Coverage & Build Links – The Marketing Meetup w/ Carrie Rose
If you only watch one talk from this list I think it should probably be this one. There is an INSANE amount to digest within one hour! Carrie’s like a runaway train once she gets going so you might need to hit pause to make notes as you go along. An awesome introduction to Digital PR talk that anyone in any industry with any level of experience can take loads from.
How To Get High DR Links With Digital PR – Authority Hacker w/ Stacey MacNaught
Ok this isn’t technically a webinar I suppose but you can watch people talking about Digital PR on your screen and I might have made more notes from this than any other talk, so it’s on the list! This talk is awesome and covers some ideas that most other talks never touch on (there’s a great segment on adding stock imagery to your list of link building assets). Plus I love the annotations and the time stamps on the video!
Another tremendous overview talk of what Digital PR is and why it’s important for your digital strategy. What I love about James’ talks is how he talks about Digital PR as being part of your SEO strategy and not just a standalone tactic. It’s impossible to pack every aspect of Digital PR into a half hour talk but this has a bloody good go at it! It looks like you need a TAD account now to watch but it’s free and easy to do and then the video will appear ready for learning to commence 🤓.
Harnessing Digital PR & Taking Your Content Further – ContentUK w/ Surena Chande
What I really like about this talk is that Surena has experience on both sides of the coin, being a Journalist turned PR, which provides some really cool unique insight on how to step your Digital PR game up. I’ve listed this under Overview because there is a little bit of everything in there but it’s an especially useful resource for the outreach side of things.
Utilising Social Media Effectively in PR – Sheffield DM w/ Alex Hickson
In my opinion Twitter is a must for Digital PR for so many reasons but especially for getting inspiration from campaigns others are sharing. This talk covers that and many more very easy to action tips on incorporating Social Media into your day-to-day activities as a Digital PR. The talk starts around 24 minutes in and there’s also two other talks from Abi Bennetts and Laura Hampton that I haven’t included because they’re similar to talks from them I’ve already listed but there’s also something unique to learn from them even in similarly titled talks.
Digital PR In Uncertain Times – Digital Strategy In Uncertain Times w/ Shannon McGuirk & Nina Sawetz
Yes the main focus of this is adapting your strategy during a pandemic but you’re always going to find lots of great insight from 3 awesome marketers (including Paddy!) and lets be honest, aren’t all times uncertain times to some extent? Video becomes available once you register to watch it.
7 Lessons Learnt From 7 Years In Digital PR – The CMA w/ Stephanie Finch
Fun quick fire overview of Digital PR that covers a lot of areas in a short amount of time, some which are talked about a lot but some that really aren’t. There’s also lots of cool case studies that are great if you’re searching for some inspiration from some of these talks.
How To Supercharge Link Building With A Digital PR Newsroom – Learn Inbound w/ Shannon McGuirk
This is more strategy focused and covers a lot of great topics that are important to consider when managing a Digital PR team and planning your outreach, specifically around reactive vs planned outreach. Reactive PR is often associated with quick turnaround comments but it can also be about getting extra bang for your buck with creative campaigns you’ve already released.
Making Your Campaign Work Harder – Learn Inbound w/ Laura Crimmons
Work smarter not harder. This is a cool talk on what a good campaign should look like and then what you can do to add extra value that generate more results once you have your campaign idea.
Another great talk to watch early on in your Digital PR career when you’re trying to figure out not just what you’re doing, but also why you’re doing it. Paddy’s short talk covers how to overcome potential issues with Digital PR as a strategy such as risk, unpredicatbility and efficiency.
Ideation / Campaign Types:
The Biggest Ideation Challenges And How To Overcome Them – The Missing Link w/ Mark Johnstone
Another one of my favourite people to listen to talk about Digital PR and Content Marketing. This is a tremendous overview discussion of ideation including how to come up with amazing content ideas and what to do when you’re struggling, as well as why you might be struggling.
Thierry is one of my favourite people to listen to talk Digital PR because I love everything data based but also because he’s incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about unearthing new data sources and finding new ways to tell stories with data. I made so many notes from this webinar that helped with getting my mind thinking more creatively about data and storytelling.
Surveys have their place when it comes to data collection but a lot of the time the data (or a suitable alternative) you need is already out there if you look hard enough. This is a super talk on how to be more creative when sourcing data while saving a lot of money on expensive survey responses.
How To Get Links Without A Big Budget – BristolSEO w/ Louise Parker
I love this talk because I’ve very much been in the camp of looking at really creative big budget campaigns and neglecting Digital PR as something only big brands with deep pockets can have great success with. That’s not the case at all. Creative ideas don’t always need to be expensive or even super time consuming and this talk explains why and how brilliantly. This is the second of three talks and starts about 31 minutes in.
Creativity Is A State Of Mind – outREACH Online w/ Kim Bjørnqvist
Cool talk on how to mentally prepare yourself for creative ideation. This is part of outREACH Online so you have to drop £15 on it but you get an entire day’s worth of legit awesome talks including the monster talk below.
How To Reverse Engineer Wildly Successful Content – outREACH Online w/ Mark Johnstone
I loved this talk. Mark breaks down several really successful creative campaigns in great detail to work out how they were done and how you can use them as inspiration to do something similar. We all use other campaigns for inspiration so there’s loads of helpful tips here for taking those inspiartion sessions to the next level.
This is a really great broad overview of what the ideation process as a whole looks like and where to start looking for campaign ideas, many of which don’t have to be really out there ideas with massive datasets.
Do you ever see coverage for a campaign and think that’s a cool idea, but then you see the brand who created it and you’re like 🤔. Digital PR done right isn’t all about links and this is a super talk on why campaigns being relevant to your brand is important and the extra benefits you’ll reap from doing so.
Psychology Principles To Power Your Digital PR Success – Pint Sized Marketing w/ Abi Bennetts
The best campaigns are the ones that tell a story that evoke an emotion. Abi has a degree in Psychology and is an awesome Digital PR so I think that makes her more than qualified to talk about this topic with 6 really simple to follow principles you can apply to every campaign. This is the first talk of three.
Don’t be put off by the niche nature of the talk title, there are loads of awesome tips that you can put into practice that are evergreen and also applicable to many other industries other than travel (obviously if you have travel clients this one is especially useful).
Dream Job Campaigns For Digital PR: How To Get More Value – Impression Webinar w/ Laura Hampton
Dream job campaigns aren’t especially unique anymore but they still work great if done well. This is a cool deep dive on one specific campaign type and how these campaigns can be used for more than just link building purposes.
How To Make Fake News For Links – SearchLeeds 2019 w/ Oliver Brett
This was my favourite talk at the first brightonSEO that I went so I was really glad when I found it somewhere else that I could share on here. Fake products/news campaigns won’t be for everyone but this is a great (and funny) talk to expand your knowledge on the concept and discover how suitable if could be for your company/any of your clients.
Gaming campaigns aren’t very frequent in Digital PR, probably for obvious reasons with the work and budget involved, but they’re usually really cool and popular if done right. This is a good talk on a more below the radar topic with lots of great case studies.
Reactive PR:
This is the third of three talks starting around 47 minutes in. Tons of great advice and case studies on how Digital PR doesn’t have to be all about big data led campaigns to get high authority links on a regular basis.
How To Build Stunning Links With Reactive PR – The CMA w/ Will Hobson
Will is back talking about Reactive PR again and how a simple tactic like Newsjacking can be such a productive tactic to have in your strategy.
How To Harness Newsjacking For Digital PR – The Missing Link w/ Rebecca Moss
A really detailed run-through of the Newsjacking technique with successful case studies and tips on how to pitch what Journalists really want.
Insight from Journalists:
Webinars with journalists are some of my favourties for their unique insight and this is for me at least the most insightful one on this list. Sian is the News Editor at The Metro and Almara is now News & Lifestyle Editor at Jam Press (she was at The Metro as well when this was recorded). Parts of this are specific to pitching during COVID but the vast majority of the tips are universally applicable and not just to news and lifestyle Journalists either.
How To Craft & Pitch Data-Led PR Campaigns – JBH Webinar w/ Ashley Kirk
Really interesting insight from The Telegraph’s Senior Data Journalist on how to use data in your campaigns and what data mistakes will prevent it from being covered. Very useful talk to watch if you’re pitching to higher end news sites that do a lot of their own data research and collection so often have a higher bar for external data led campaigns they will cover.
Great content if you’re specifically working with clients in the Home & Interiors industry with insights from the Digital Editor of House Beautful and a Freelance Journalist on what stories they like being pitched.
How To Pitch To Personal Finance Journalists – The Missing Link w/ Tara Evans & Adam Williams
As is the theme with all of these talks in this section, the insight is especially relevant if you have clients in the industry that the Journalist writes within, but the insight is mostly universally applicable, particuarly when it comes to things not to do! Tara is Digital Consumer Editor at The Sun and Adam is a Senior Personal Finance Reporter at The Telegraph.
Pitching:
Also, see literally all of the Journalists Insights webinars listed above for pitching advice.
Outreach Panel – outREACH Online w/ Carrie Rose, Gisele Navarro, Laura D’Amato & Ruth Barrett
You do have to pay for this but it’s only £15 and that gets you all of the talks from the event but I promise this talk is worth the £15 alone. Amazing discussion on how to master your outreach emails with screenshots of actual emails that secured coverage.
How To Write The Perfect Email – outREACH Online w/ Stephen Panico
This is also part of the package of talks that you get from outREACH Online along with the panel discussion above so good times if you’re looking for amazing webinars on pitching. Stephen is from Buzzstream which is the ouytreach tool of choice for many Digital PRs so he knows what he’s talking about and has juicy data to back it up.
Making Headlines – SearchLeeds 2019 w/ Shannon McGuirk
Do you ever start putting your outreach email together and just think to yourself “ahh sod it that’s probably the best way”. 🙋♂️. Shannon talks about how to stop over-relying on gut instinct in your pitching. Come for the knowledge, stay for the clicker malfunctions.
I love this as a bite size overview of how to make your outreach emails stand out and increase your open rates. Awesome if you want lots of easily actionable tips in a short amount of time.
The Anatomy Of The Perfect Pitch Email – Moz Whiteboard Fridays w/ Amanda Milligan
Another Whiteboard Friday that’s short on time but high on usefulness. This is a really neat run through of every layer of a successful outreach email and the reasoning behind every sentence.
As well as the discussion of how to craft your pitch emails, you get some great tips on creating your outreach list too. Another great talk if you want to see screenshots of successful pitches that get results to give you an idea of a template to start from.
🎉 at another title with a Pitch Perfect pun. A different approach to writing a great pitch email based around the psychology of what makes a great story and a pitch that will connect with the journalist.
Post Pitching:
Everyone at some point will have a campaign that doesn’t quite go according to plan. This webinar has examples of campaigns that didn’t meet expectations with tons of great advice on what to do and how to pivot to retrieve some results after your initial angle comes up short.
The Campaign Comeback: What To Do When Content Fails – Moz Whiteboard Friday w/ Shannon McGuirk
This is a great extension of the above JBH webinar with five steps to follow if your campaign hasn’t performed as well as you hoped it would (it happens!). Much of this can also be applied to a successful campaign to get even more coverage for it further down the line.
Measuring The Value Of Links – outREACH Online w/ Lisa Myers
Not all links are created equal. This is a great talk on why to help you make better use of your link building resources, understand why your campaigns aren’t producing the ranking shifts you expected and how to better communicate what successful results look like to your client/manager. As mentioned before you have to pay for the outREACH Online talks but they work out at like £2 a talk which is still for how much value is in just one of them honestly.
Content Driven Link Building: What Does Good Look Like? – Learn Inbound w/ Paddy Moogan
Spoiler alert: there isn’t an answer. But there is a really insightful talk on how you should define it and how you need to learn from past campaigns to manage expectations and budget utilisation. Honestly this talk is way more interesting than I just tried to make it sound!
How To Turn Brand Mentions Into Links – Learn Inbound w/ James Brockbank
Ever secured a great piece of coverage but it doesn’t include a link to your site? While this isn’t the end of the world like some people make it seem sometimes, links are always more favourable than brand mentions. Brand mentions can definitely be turned into links if they add extra value to the user but there’s a right way and definitely a wrong way to go about it. And you can find out how in under 10 minutes here!
Improving The Measurable Impact Of Digital PR – Impression Webinar w/ Laura Hampton
Not many people talk about reporting for how important it is to the work that Digital PRs do. Some great discussion here on Digital PR being about more than just building links. This is mostly about reporting but a lot of it also ties into the strategy elements that more members of your team are working on.
Managing A Digital PR Team:
Bit of a bonus section if you’re running/managing/growing a Digital PR Team/Agency.
Grow Your Agency – Eximo Marketing w/ Carrie Rose & Tom Etherington
Grow Your Agency – Eximo Marketing w/ Stacey MacNaught & Paddy Moogan
These guys kinda know a thing or two about growing an agency that puts out some awesome Digital PR work (amongst other services) and here they share amazing really detailed insight into how they and their agencies got to where they are now. Two great sources of motivation if you’re looking to grow your agency.
How To Build A Successful Digital PR Team – The Missing Link w/ James Congdon
Lots of great tips and advice for hiring new members of your team and growing your team.
Cultural Diversity In The Marketing Sector – Business As Unusual w/ Azeem Ahmad
These aren’t webinars that will teach you much about how to be great at Digital PR but they will teach you a lot about how to be a better person within the industry. Especially important to watch if you’re part of your company’s hiring process but I really think everyone should watch these just to better educate themselves on the topic of cultural diversity.