What do SEOs Need to Know About Reactive PR?

In this live podcast we talked about Reactive PR and covered everything that you need to know about it. Joining our host David Bain was Danielle Neah Amponsah, Eva Cheng, Sarah Ross and Sarah Jayne Taylorson.

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Transcript

David Bain 

What is Reactive PR and what do SEOs need to know about it? Welcome to the June 2025, edition of the Majestic SEO panel, where we’re discussing what is reactive PR and what do SEOs need to know about it. I’m your host. David Bain, and joining me today are four great guests, so let’s meet them starting off with Sarah.

Sarah Ross 

Hi, I’m Sarah Ross. I am an account director at R&Co Communications and we’re an agency based in the West Midlands, and started life as a traditional PR agency 45 years ago, and then in recent years, we’ve added SEO and social media to our portfolio.

On a personal note, I’ve worked in PR for well over 10 years, and SEO for about eight years, and working across the two disciplines and helping to integrate them, really for the clients that I work with.

David Bain 

Thanks so much for joining us, Sarah. And just to confuse things, also joining us with us today is Sarah-Jayne.

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

Hi, I’m Sarah-Jayne and I’m a Senior Digital PR manager at Cedarwood Digital. So we are an SEO, PPC and Digital PR agency based in Manchester. I’m remote, so I’m based up here in Newcastle, but I’ve worked in Digital PR and Digital Marketing for over seven years now. I’m really passionate about Reactive PR and it’s something that I really think has loads of potential for a range of clients. So yeah, really excited to chat with you all today.

David Bain 

Thank you so much for joining us. And another one of our great panelists today is Danielle.

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

Hello, I’m Danielle Neah Amponsah, and I’ve been working in Digital PR and Digital Marketing for 11 years, and I was working for a PR and SEO agency back in 2014 and since then, I’ve been working in-house as well as agency side. At the moment I’m a consultant running Handnote so you can find me there and we work with a range of brands.

David Bain 

Thank you, Danielle. Our final panelist today is Eva.

Eva Cheng 

Hi, I’m Eva Cheng. I’m a freelance Digital PR Consultant. So I work with a lot of in-house businesses, as well as working with agencies and giving them support on the Digital PR side. I have around about eight years of experience within digital marketing and started off in social media for a few years. Still continue to do social media, but digital PR is kind of my main domain now.

David Bain 

So every one of our panelists has a decent amount of experience there, roughly eight to ten years of experience in digital PR, so we’re going to get a lot of wonderful experienced information today. Let’s start off with the same question for everyone, maybe starting off with Sarah, what is Reactive PR?

Sarah Ross 

Reactive PR is really about responding to what’s happening, like it could be a big news story that’s breaking, or it could be something that’s trending. So for us at R&Co, a lot of our clients are in the B2B space, so we are doing a lot of reactive work around changes in legislation. So Brexit conversations and Trump’s tariffs have been big for us. We work with a big customs broker, so we’re responding to these big sort of news topics and helping to add context and help people to understand what they mean.

David Bain 

Sarah-Jayne, what are your thoughts on, what is Reactive PR?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think that Reactive PR is finding that way to put your brand at the heart of what people are talking about, whether that is something that’s happened in the news, whether it’s a social media trend or kind of broader industry trends, it’s about kind of having your finger on the pulse of what’s going on, what’s relevant to your client, and where you can add value with commentary. It’s important to keep what you’re talking about very fresh, and it appeals to journalists because it’s timely, and that’s ultimately what we’re looking for, that journalistic appeal.

David Bain 

Danielle, what are your thoughts?

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

I like to think of Reactive PR as having three main sort of areas: the main area would be doing proactive, reactive, which is when you’ve got your calendar all set up, for example, if you’re working wellness space, then maybe Mental Health Awareness Week means you’ve got something planned in for that.

Another thing that I would think about is News Jacking, which is when there is a story breaking. So as Sarah-Jayne mentioned, you hop on to that with expert comments or statistics or anything else to add.

Then the third area of Reactive PR is Journo Requests, which is when the journalists are actively seeking expert commentary or a piece of a story idea or something to complete their story that they’re writing on, and you can jump onto that provide expert commentary.

David Bain 

Eva, what are your thoughts?

Eva Cheng 

I completely agree with everything that everyone else has said, it’s just bringing your brand that you’re working for to the forefront of the media by jumping on relevant news at the time.

David Bain 

Okay, so Danielle shared some good specific examples there, so let’s dive into more specific examples in terms of why it’s so valuable for SEO. So going back to Sarah Ross, Sarah, what are your thoughts on why it’s so valuable for SEO?

Sarah Ross 

It’s a really good opportunity for link building because it’s a really good opportunity to get your brand in high quality media titles that you might not necessarily gain coverage in otherwise. So having the right spokesperson quoted and sending expert commentary from them to add to a journalist stories is really valuable for positioning them as an expert, and sending all the right signals to Google by gaining links, either to a service page that they might be talking around and how it relates to the topic, or it could be a link back to their own personal bio within the company website, because that’s also a really good signal for those EEAT signals.

David Bain 

Sarah-Jayne, I saw you nodding away quite a bit there. What did you agree with and did you disagree with anything?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

No, I agree with all of that. We work a lot with clients in the YMYL space, and that thought leadership side of things is hugely important for those EEAT signals. If you’re working in things like finance or health or well-being, then having those people there that can comment reactively, is continually signaling to Google that you have expertise in that area and you have authority and having those kind of brand citations or links in those kind of high ‘DA’ publications further backs that up as well. So I think from that point of view, it’s probably one of the most valuable tools you can have if you’ve got those thought leaders on side as well.

David Bain 

Danielle, it was Sarah-Jayne’s thought leadership comment that seemed to resonate with you the most. Why was that the case?

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

I think nowadays we see that building a brand and building a personal brand, is very much talked about now online. So building a brand in terms of a business, you need to also come up as a founder. People want to know who you are. So having that thought leadership side-by-side of building your business is very much important. So in terms of EEAT SEO value, that does play a big role. So I think Reactive PR is a great way for businesses, as well as founders or C-suite professionals, to get their name out there and actually build authority and build their brand.

David Bain 

Eva, are there any ways of deciding on which thought leader to use within a business?

Eva Cheng 

It really depends on kind of the request and the news you want to jump on. I would say, for example, if it was like a mental health piece, you would use a mental health advisor for that. You wouldn’t just use a general CEO or finance officer on something like that, because it doesn’t add up, and if the media coverage doesn’t add up to your comments, then that doesn’t make sense overall, and Google will recognize that it doesn’t make sense, so it obviously would impact you.

I want to add to that as well, with category page link building, I found it very successful with Reactive PR and based on the topics itself. So for example, if you wanted to build more links within a car leasing page, and if a journalist was looking for information on like the finance side of leasing, or anything like that, it gives you the direct access and ability to kind of request for that niche category page link which will carry value over to your website for there.

David Bain 

So journalists are generally open to linking directly to category pages? I guess if you see something quite specifically on a topic in relation to what your category is about, then it would seem relevant and appropriate for them to link to you?

Eva Cheng 

From my past experience, I’ve had very positive like outcomes from that. It’s either they don’t link or they will link to that specific page.

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

Just to build on that as well, it’s making sure that whoever you’re putting forward has that authority, and that kind of helps with the buy in from journalists to get the links as well. You’re essentially getting them on-side to say that we have authority. It’s almost like a give and take, because we’ve provided this expert commentary that really does add value to your article. So therefore, why shouldn’t they want to link back to your site? Because it naturally has the authority that you’ve built through that person as well, and so it’s making sure that it matches all the way across.

David Bain 

What metrics do you use to demonstrate to the journalists that you have the authority that you’re talking about?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think bio pages are really important if you have them. So we work with a client in the bedding space, and they have ‘sleep experts’, and we’ve noticed in links to a lot of competitors that they’re quoting, maybe founders, but they don’t have any background in science or health. So it’s looking at academic credentials, where they’ve been cited before, and having all of that ready on a bio page is just signaling not only to Google, but to those journalists they should be trusted.

I know from experience that journalists are now going to a lot more lengths to check the credentials of who they are quoting, and we’re hearing it more and more. And that’s twofold, really, it’s because of AI, unfortunately, because a lot of people are creating these AI-generated experts who aren’t real people, and it’s also to do with credibility for them, right? They need to make sure that their source has the credibility that they’re saying they do.

So sometimes that might mean they’re doing their due diligence, and they’re going on your site and they’re looking at profile, or they’re looking at other sites they’ve been mentioned on, or even picking up the phone and calling. There have been times where we’ve seen journalists wanting to pick up the phone and speak to the expert directly, because they know PRs might be drafting up quotes, but they need to know there’s somebody behind that as well.

David Bain 

I wasn’t aware that an AI-generated expert was such an issue. I guess that’s more of a bigger thing as time goes by. Is it possible to create an AI generated expert that has such a good public persona, LinkedIn profile that most journalists are fooled by, or would most journalists not be fooled by that?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think they’re getting more savvy. But I’ve been to conferences where people have actively promoted this as an SEO tactic, and I think we can all I can see everyone nodding. I can’t believe anyone would suggest it from an ethical point of view, but there’s definitely been some instances of those people being cited in very credible news sources, and they’re not people. I think it’s a huge problem in our industry, but I don’t know if anyone else has come up against it as well?

Sarah Ross 

I’ve heard people talking at conferences on this topic. And yes, from a journalist point of view, it’s very worrying for them because it’s their name on the line if they’re publishing something from an expert who isn’t real, because the outcome of that and the impact on their career could be really negative.

My view is that in the long run, it’s not going to work as a tactic and at some point it’s going to come unstuck, so you might as well put the effort into actually doing it properly.

David Bain 

Coming unstuck could mean very negative things for your brand as well.

Sarah Ross 

Yeah, you’d be doing more harm than good.

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

I think SEOs, or people that are doing using the AI generated sort of people to provide expert commentary, they’re forgetting that the whole point of this is also to build reputation. It’s building a brand. This is PR at the end of the day. Yes, it’s digital, and yes, we’ve got the SEO element which drives the whole value, but it’s a business, and at the end of the day you need to build that trust with your audience and with the journalists and everyone around the public.

David Bain 

So is a key element of the PR role to actually try and raise the profile of these thought leaders within businesses? And if so, is part of that to actually try and get AI to understand that these individuals are thought leaders, or should be thought leaders within a particular niche?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

We know that LLMs are looking at signals from those kind of high ‘DA’ consumer national titles and they’re pulling them in to the AI overview, and they’re often directly showing brands or experts at those brands to answer queries. So I think it’s becoming an increasingly important part of what we do, not just to build the brand, not just to build awareness around the brand, but to the people that are important to the brand as well.

David Bain 

What are a few steps that you would recommend taking in order to do that, to actually increase the presence of that thought leader online and any eye search engines?

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

First thing I would say was just to make sure you’re very clear on the topics or the themes for kind of what you want to be known for as a business or the brand, what your key topics are, just making sure that you’re consistent with that throughout.

Eva Cheng 

Mine was exactly the same as Danielle, and that’s to keep consistent with the areas you want to talk about. So for example, if you were in the finance industry, I know that it’s very broad area to be talking about, but if you have a certain qualification or experience within, I don’t know, loans, then stick to that area and that specific niche, and then from there, you will gain the reputation of the loan expert.

This means that journalists are recognizing you because they always keep an eye on other journalists coverage within their space, and they will recognize that you or your experts are being used, and then they will hopefully go to you directly for expert commentary.

David Bain 

That’s a great tip there. So if you’re a relatively big business with a few potential thought leaders, and maybe you’ve got some senior thought leaders that are experts at many topics, you would still not necessarily position that thought leader as an expert in multiple topics. You’d perhaps say, you are an expert on loans, you are an expert on mortgages, and you’re we’re going to build you up as an expert in those niche areas, as opposed to too many different individual areas?

Eva Cheng 

I think that’s not typically the best way to go about it, especially if you’ve got several people within the business who has the qualifications and the background to offer these expert tips on the area.

Whilst we were on the topic of AI, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but have you seen journalists who have in their bio that they are assisted with AI. So AI assisted journalists, and I think that’s one of the things that people need to pay attention of who they’re contacting, because do you want your brand to be associated with an AI assisted journalist.

David Bain 

Does that actually mean the articles are written by AI?

Eva Cheng 

So it’s a journalist who would, I guess, take your press release and take a load of different press releases and use AI to assist with writing, the subtotal of like different press releases in one and different data sets, that’s my point of view.

I don’t know if anyone’s had any direct experience with someone from an AI journalist?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

That’s how I under understand it. I think it’s a bit deliberately kept a little bit mystified. I don’t know whether that’s a deliberate choice. They’re very clear about the fact that their articles are written with the help of AI, but they don’t do it entirely. But beyond that, I don’t it would be interesting to know what that looks like from a day to day for them.

David Bain 

Are there any tools that you actually determine which journalists are potentially the most relevant and authoritative to be approaching?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I personally think there’s a ton of media databases out there, and they’re helpful, but nothing beats manually looking. Nothing beats like going into Google News and seeing who’s covering that topic, especially if we’re talking about reactive, like, who’s always talking about, well we’ll use Love Island as an example that comes out next week, so that’s going to be a huge reactive opportunity for people in the lifestyle space. So which writers are writing about that?

And you don’t need an expensive tool or a database, to go and find that yourself. So I would say that’s always my first port of call with Reactive PR and finding the right people.

David Bain 

it would be good to actually use that particular example and give the viewer some tips in terms of how you’d go about using that particular series as an opportunity to feature your brand in a publication.

So first of all, do you actually build a relationship with a journalist beforehand? How do you pitch to them what story is likely to resonate with a journalist, and how do you tie what you’re doing together with that brand?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think relationships are important in PR without a doubt, and I always think people talk about us having this many relationships with journalists, but does that equate to coverage? Does it equate to links, or whatever it might be?

So for us, we look at it and we have a reactive briefing twice a week, and we’ll talk about what’s coming up, and then we kind of pick it apart to say, how can we make this relevant to clients in the sleep space? How can we make it relevant to clients in the medical space, cosmetics, or whatever it might be, and we pick it apart on all its different levels. The one thing you have to be really careful of is just because something is trending does not mean it is relevant to your brand, and doesn’t mean you should be commenting on it.

That may have worked a few years ago, to be doing content that had no relevancy, but I think from a reactive point of view, yes, Love Island is going to be huge, and we’re all going to be talking about it, or the showbiz writer is going to be talking about it, but again, should a Loans Company be talking about Love Island? Probably not. It’s really using that common sense as well, because if I were reading that, would I want to hear from this person about this particular subject?

David Bain 

So I mean, if you’re a cosmetics company, do you have to wait until someone talks about cosmetics on Love Island in order to have an opinion. Or is your brand malleable enough in order to actually be able to just talk about Love Island in general? How do you go about trying to get your brand featured?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

It’s a case of watching and seeing what people are talking about. I appreciate that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m not saying everyone should go and watch Love Island every night, but it’s watching what they are discussing, what they are wearing, what their relationships are like, etc.

If I was a cosmetics brand, I’d be saying, well, what’s the look of the new cast coming in? Are they very natural? Do they have really glam makeup? Whatever it might be, just picking out those kind of trends, it doesn’t have to be that we’re outwardly talking about the topic. In fact, I would argue it’s better if you can find something that’s a little bit more under the surface that everyone is aware of but isn’t actively being talked about, if that makes sense.

David Bain 

I love that. Okay, so you’re not tying it together directly with your brand necessarily. You’re simply talking about a topic that relates directly to your brand and relates to love Island, and then getting people to find out more about what you do as a result of the link or the dimension that you get as part of your thoughts on that piece.

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

Yeah, I think a great example. I can’t remember who it was, but a couple of years ago, somebody from a hairdressing brand or an extensions brand did something about how often the girls get their hair done in the villa and when their extensions are showing, or how it how the pool affects blonde highlights, whatever it might be, just those little tidbits of information that you can add as an expert without actually actively talking about your brand it, it does still add that authority again.

David Bain 

I was actually thinking if we could think of any other examples, any series, any other opportunities that you can latch on to and comment some other examples that perhaps another one of our panelists can share?

Eva Cheng 

I’m trying to think about all of the big TV shows and movies that have just been out like, I guess you have, like, Succession and Severance. And so in Severance, essentially, people go into work and sever themselves away from work. So they have two different lifestyles, work life and real life. Not going to be give any spoilers, but Mental Health Experts could be saying, why people would want to sever.

YouGov actually did a survey on this and actually asked people in the UK whether or not they would want to sever and go to work, but it’s something where you can use that TV show and go on and find the survey data from YouGov, and if it’s relevant to your expert, jump on that statistic and offer why people are giving the answers they’re giving, and providing reasons why.

You could also tie it in with like a HR expert and they could offer advice of improving the workspace, or why people are feeling so the need to sever. There’s a lot of directions you could take.

David Bain 

How reactive do you have to be? Is it a case of who jumps on first, has more of an opportunity to win, or are you best to deliberate it for a few hours and come up with something a little bit more creative and higher standards? And is there a maximum window that you would recommend trying to do this within and just giving up after that?

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

We’ve seen success pitching within 24 hours, or and have seen success actually coming in quite early. So as soon as we see something, we do hop on if we’ve got that expert commentary ready, like, for example, with our clients, what we try to do in the onboarding process make sure we’ve got all the key topics and expert commentary, everything that we need in one place. So we can just kind of go in, if we see a reactive opportunity and go into bank and see what we’ve got, tweak it, make it, make sure it is relevant and it suits on the journey asking for and then pitch that in.

And if there are times that we’re not quite sure, we need a bit more creativity, or we need to go back to client and get something signed up, or whatever it may be that can take a bit longer. So yeah, it could probably take about a day or two, but we do ideally try and make sure we pitch within 24 hours. I think that’s a really good sweet spot. If you can do it within two or three hours, that’s even better.

David Bain 

In terms of a message that you use when you’re reaching out to a journalist, do you email them or do you try and phone them if you do have that opportunity, and how do you go about pitching to them to try and give your brand the maximum opportunity to be the one that’s featured?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think that email is the best way to keep it short and sweet, straight to the point, this is the hook in a subject line. Tell them why it’s time sensitive. Tell them what you can add and kind of remove the fluff as well.

Like Danielle says, time is of the essence with these kind of things, and journalists are also under that same time pressure, in the same way that we’re competing against a million other brands to talk about this thing as a journalist is competing against journalists in their own space at different publications.

So you want to kind of cut out the fluff and just get straight to the point and say, this is the story, this is what we’re adding, and we’re here if you need more. That would be always my approach.

Sarah Ross 

Speed is really important, and being really clear in your subject line about what you’re sending. Half the battle is getting a journalist to open your email and phone doesn’t really work these days. A lot of journalists don’t even have a phone on their desk, so trying to get hold of them can be really difficult.

So definitely make sure that your subject line is really clear. Make sure your pitch email is really clear about what you’re offering, who you’re offering, and that the quality of the commentary or the story is really important as well. Don’t just regurgitate what’s been talked about before. It’s really about offering something new, something that the journalist won’t get from anybody else, whether it’s a unique perspective or it’s personal experience or expertise that that another brand can’t offer it. It’s really about offering something a little bit different.

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

Just to add to what some of us said to make sure that you stand out. Data is a really big one. As a business, you obviously have internal data, whether that’s your website info, like website data that you’ve got, or customers, whatever it is that you have that is unique to your brand and your industry, you can share that as well. That will really make you stand out.

David Bain 

Sarah-Jayne, you said to keep it short and sweet. Does that mean that you should just give them a synopsis of what the story is to begin with? Or should you immediately share your full opinion piece with them in order to actually not have to actually ask you for anything else?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I would say you don’t want to be leaving them with any questions that can’t be answered in that first pitch. Because if it were me writing a pitch and I thought, Oh God, I’m going to have to ask another five or six questions about this, I’d probably be thinking that this isn’t something I’m going to have time to cover now.

In terms of keeping it short and sweet in the initial pitch, who you are and what you’re doing should be very straightforward, and then include that body of thought leadership or data, whatever it might be. I don’t always think you need a full press release. I don’t know what everyone else’s thoughts are on that and that, but as PRs, we’re very used to the format of the press release, but for reactive, it’s not always necessary, and it’s striking that balance of answering all the questions, but not including stuff that’s not needed as well.

Eva Cheng 

I agree with Sarah-Jayne, whenever I do Reactive PR, I typically don’t have a press release. I just have the key points at the very top, along with the expert commentary below, and then I also offer a little bit at the end, which is a bit more information about the expert and why you should trust this expert.

Sometimes, if I’ve seen that the journalist has included headshots for a version of the expert that they tend to cover, then I’ll also include the headshots and send it to them straight away, so and they already have that they don’t have to ask me for a headshot for my expert.

David Bain 

Do we not want to give journalists and publications an exclusive? Or are we better sending the same story to as many people as possible?

Eva Cheng 

I would say for this one that it really depends on the story and what you’re going out with. If it’s an exclusive in terms of a journalist that you already have a great relationship with, and they come to you directly for a comment, then yes, have that as an exclusive, but make some sort of agreement where you can potentially go out with the comment twenty-four hours later, because they’ve had first access to your data and your findings.

David Bain 

If someone has used your story, do we want to actually keep a record of that and reach out to them first the next time?

Eva Cheng 

Yeah, it kind of like builds that strong relationship with the journalist means that they can trust you, and you can trust them in terms of coverage, and also hopefully link back.

David Bain 

In terms of getting as much coverage as possible, do you also try and rank publications according to some kind of Domain Authority or likely positioning within a page, or is simply mentioned all you’re looking for and it doesn’t really matter where it is.

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

That depends on your goal and what your strategy looks like. If it’s about brand awareness, if we’re looking at niche publications, are we trying to avoid affiliate links? Because these are all things that you have to pay attention to when you’re outreaching, for example, like all the major kind of new UK nationals now, I would say, like a vast majority of them, if your client is on some sort of affiliate scheme, they’re going to end up getting an affiliate link. And there’s value in an affiliate link, for sure, especially for an E-commerce site, but if that’s not part of your plan, if your plan is to increase organic visibility or drive traffic to a category page that’s not in those affiliates, then you maybe want to be prioritizing slightly lower “DA”, but that are in the niche sector, or it really depends on what your overall goal is.

David Bain 

Do you really need to be an expert reactive PR person in order to do this properly? Or can you just be a general marketer and have this as part of your occasional routines?

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

There’s no harm in learning, asking the right questions, and doing your research beforehand. Everyone needs to start from somewhere. But do the homework about it, and learn how to do it properly and test it out, try it, and then you will learn from there if it works for you or not.

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think it’s a kind of low budget tactic if you want to give it a give it a try. I do think there’s value in going to experts if you want to do it at scale, but if you’re on a really tight budget or you’re a really small brand, then you don’t necessarily need all the best tools, you just need to have an awareness of the news agenda and where you fit into that. So I think it is possible for digital marketers to do it that are outside of the Digital PR sphere as well.

David Bain 

Are there certain brands or types of businesses that are better suited to harness the potential reactive PR?

Sarah Ross 

There’s probably opportunities out there for any brand. It’s about understanding the audience, where you want to be seen, and then what those journalists are writing about and looking for. Once you understand what the media landscape looks like, then that’s going to give you a better idea of the possibilities and what you can do with it.

And it’s not always tools that you need, but you know you can use things like Google Alerts that are free and Talkwalker alerts that are free, just to see what’s being talked about and published about certain topics. I think you just really need to consume the news and learn more about it and how the journalists are writing, and then see how your brand and your experts can fit into that.

David Bain 

Shall we move on to measuring success then, what tools do you use, what metrics do you track, and how often do you have to measure success?

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

I think it depends on what your overall goal is. If we’re looking at visibility, then that’s something we measure long term, but for reactive as a specific kind of niche of what we do, I would say it is looking at kind of coverage in terms of mentions and links to start off with. If we’re looking at this as more of a short term tactic, as in quick fire results, then a low budget and low time spent would always be my primary goal with reactive specifically, without going into broader digital PR metrics.

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

I definitely agree with what Sarah-Jayne said, that because it’s such a short term tactic, it’s quick turnaround, we’re just looking at if they say the right thing about our brand? Did we get featured? Did we get a link? Put that in the report, or whatever it is, and that adds up over time.

The great thing about reactive in regards to measuring success over however long, is that when you do have a digital PR campaign, like a big piece, and you’ve got that, and over the months, years, whatever you can always use, Reactive PR to come back to that and say, hey, we actually got a piece about that, and add that in as an opportunity to get a link or mention, and that also can add to the topic whatever isn’t the category pages from the drive traffic to whatever it may be. So it does have varied sort of success depending on what you’re looking at.

David Bain 

Sarah, do you have any thoughts that you want to add in relation to how you measure success?

Sarah Ross 

I agree with what’s been said about the brand mentions and monitoring those, the coverage, the quality of the titles that you’re gaining, the coverage in, and the links are the main ones that we look at.

David Bain 

Does this mean that it’s not really possible to be strategic about what you’re going to do and plan your Reactive PR or is a lot of the planning around what media opportunities are likely to be happening over the year, and just being willing to piggyback on what you think is going to be happening.

Eva Cheng 

There’s a lot of proactive planning that goes on a lot in-line with reactive, and we didn’t really talk about it much, but the tools that you can use for journalist requests, they are very much the reactive side of things. So if a journalist is asking for something specifically, then that’s when your proactive plan might not come in to play with the reactive commentary that’s needed.

Sarah Ross 

You can be proactive about it, and there are some things that you know are going to be talked about year after year. You can look back at journalists stories and what they’ve written about previously, topics that might come up again, you know, any sort of extreme weather, heat waves, snow we can’t cope with any of those they’re about. There’s bound to be angles that you can be reactive on, things like the budget for B2B stuff. So you know when that happens. That’s in the diary. We know that’s going to happen. How can we react to it? What can we say about it? What can, you know our clients advise their clients on? So there are certain topics that I think you can plan for and you can speak to your brand and the experts within your brand and understand the topics that they are able to talk about and you can come up with a plan of the key topics you want to look at, and where are the likely opportunities going to be and try and map out what that might look like across the year.

David Bain 

Let’s finish off with one action that SEOs need to take in order to get started with Reactive PR, if they haven’t really done so already, and also, at the same time, share where the listener can find out more about you.

Sarah Ross 

I think you should identify the media that you want your experts to appear in and just really consume those stories to understand what the journalists are looking for and who those journalists are. That would be my top tip for getting started before you even write anything, just understanding what that journalist is writing about and what’s being talked about in the industry.

And you can find out more about me at rcomms.co.uk

David Bain 

Thanks for coming on.

Sarah-Jayne Taylorson 

One of the things I really recommend, especially if you’re a one-man-band, if you don’t have loads of time, then create a quote bank and just start housing all of the things that you’ve put together, whether it’s like existing on site blogs, whether it’s quotes that you’ve provided before, or like press releases you’ve done, have a quote bank where you can kind of put all the theme, the key themes and topics that you’re talking about, next to that content, so that if things come in through a journo request, or if something comes up in the news, you can have a quick scan and say, Ah, yes, we’ve already got something on this, and it might be that you can outreach that directly, or build on it, add something new to it.

So our website is cedarwood.digital, and I’m on LinkedIn and X/Twitter.

David Bain 

Danielle, what’s one action SEOs can take to get started with reactive PR today?

Danielle Neah Amponsah 

I’d say to sign up to free Reactive PR tools and Journo Request tools. There’s so many of them all now, you can just go on to Twitter and type in #journorequest. You can do the same for BlueSky if you’re on there. And you can just literally monitor, just spend a few minutes a day, just go through it, see what comes up, and you’ll start getting an idea of what the journalists are asking for and how, how they want it structured, so that you can then prepare to pitch yourself.

You can find me on handnote.co.uk or on LinkedIn.

David Bain 

Eva?

Eva Cheng 

I’d echo what everybody else said, along with making sure that you have the right spokesperson on the niche that you want to talk about. So go about building their profile, getting a little bit about their background, what qualifications they have, and a headshot. If you have those, it saves you from asking your client later on and down the line, have you got a headshot or do you have experience in this topic, and then having to wait for a reply.

You can find me on LinkedIn, it’s just Eva Cheng and on BlueSky or Twitter, it’s just EvaChengPR.

David Bain 

Thanks everyone. You’ve been listening to the Majestic SEO panel. If you want to join us live next time, sign up at majestic.com/majestic-seo-podcast and, of course, check out SEOin2025.com.

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