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Digital PR seeks to land coverage and links in digital outlets for PR and SEO benefits for the client. Traditional PR has a broader definition encompassing all public relations activities, from media relations to crisis communications. Digital PR and traditional PR overlap where they both seek media coverage from relevant and authoritative online publications for their clients.

PRSA defines public relations as:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

It’s a broad definition, but shows that traditional PR encompasses the whole perception of the brand in the public’s eye. PRSA continues:

“At its core, public relations is about influencing, engaging and building a relationship with key stakeholders across numerous platforms in order to shape and frame the public perception of an organization”

So digital PR by our definition is much more focused on placements for our brands on media outlets, while traditional PR has a much broader application.

Digital PR is not a full replacement for traditional PR, especially for established companies. Established companies definitely need a resource for crisis communications, investor relations, event management, and many practices which digital PR do not cover.

Below are some typical functions within PR, the bold and italicized items are unique to traditional PR and not typically covered by digital PR:

  • Corporate Communications
  • Crisis Communications
  • Executive Communications
  • Internal Communications
  • Investor Relations Communications
  • Marketing Communications
  • Integrated Marketing/Integrated Marketing Communications
  • Media Relations
  • Content Creation
  • Events
  • Social Media
  • Multimedia
  • Reputation Management
  • Speechwriting
  • Brand Journalism

As we can see above, traditional public relations covers much more than press placements, which are the main focus of digital PR.

So does a typical company need digital PR, traditional PR, or both?

For smaller and growing companies that need to focus on growth rather than corporate communications, digital PR may be all that is needed during this phase of the company’s growth.

It’s up to the company to decide where traditional PR fits in. A lot depends on the company size, industry, and risks.

Companies in more regulated sectors like healthcare and finance will need to rely on traditional PR services more than a B2B software startup will, for example. For some of these growth companies, a good blend may be a mix of 80% digital PR and 20% traditional PR.

Joe Robison

Founder & Consultant
Joe Robison is the founder of Green Flag Digital. He founded the agency in 2015 and has been heads-down scaling content marketing and SEO services for clients ever since. He is an occasional surfer, fledgling yogi, and sucker for organized travel tours.