Digital PR to Protect Brand Reputation | James Dooley ft Ben Nicholls, Peter Jones & Paul Truscott

James Dooley: Why digital PR is important for online reputation management. There's a lot of inquiries that are starting to come out, especially now with AI Overviews and people wanting to improve their AI résumé of not just being cited but being recommended within AI. And online reputation management is becoming a lot, lot more important nowadays. It's not just about Google or Bing. It's about what ChatGPT is saying about you, what Claude's saying about you, and what Google AI Mode is also saying about you. It's not now just the first 10 results within Google. You've got to start looking at ORM services. And one of the most important parts of an ORM service is digital PR. So, I'll start with you, Paul. Why is digital PR vital to try and start owning that brand visibility, to define who you are, what you do, and why you are brilliant?

Paul David Truscott: Well, as soon as AI search came along, it made guys like Ben super important. And the reason for that is that a human being typically will look at the first page of Google and not beyond it. Right? So, your job as an, um, online reputation management consultant or SEO, whatever you want to call that role, was to push any bad news down and replace it with good news, right? So, you, you... And you just wanted to push... Even push it down to position 11 was fine, right? You've done your job. Well, unfortunately, the AI, uh, search, uh, engines will look much further than a human for information. And so a lot of this stuff that we thought was buried is now being surfaced by these AI search engines. So it's really, really important to use high quality, not use tricks, which essentially is what the SEO guys were doing, using tricks, often black hat tricks, to push, um, uh, listings down. You now need to be using quality publications so that the LLMs will actually cite you because it's going to be at the top of page one, right? It's the, it's the dress circle real estate. There's no getting away from that. So, you, you have to use quality publications to get into that spot. And the best way to do it is to use digital PR. It's this... It's... There's no choice but to spend some money now. Unfortunately, that's the reality if you want to do good online reputation management.

James Dooley: Yeah. Ben, just a question with regards to JamPrime or Jam Press for digital PR campaigns. How many clients seem to come to you for just proactive brand building versus do you actually have any that come direct through to you for online reputation management, or is it mainly just done via, like, agencies like us that come to you saying, well, we need to fix this? Or does some come directly for ORM services, or is it mainly just brand building at present of what you get business for?

Ben Nicholls: Yeah, I think most of the business that we get direct is for brand building. Um, so using a number of our services to sort of, like, you know, create positive sort of conversation around their brand. But we obviously work with a number of agencies and people that, that will come to us with requests for all sorts of things, right? There's lots of different things why, why someone might want to be in the press. But yeah, online reputation management, I think, you know, PR can definitely help with that. From my perspective, I would always say, you know, the first thing to do to have a good reputation is to deliver a good service. And if you're delivering a very good service, then, you know, you shouldn't need to be worrying about it too much. But if you want to support the things that you're doing really well and talk about the things that you're doing really well, that will definitely help with your reputation, from my perspective, online.

James Dooley: So, it's really great to hear from you guys, you know, how just... How much importance LLMs are putting on, on that sort of information and that sort of, that sort of PR. Yeah, I want to expand a little bit on that to you, Peter, about what Ben's just said there. And, and I completely agree. Provide an amazing service and generally speaking, you, you'll always be fine. However, we know firsthand that at times you could have 100 really, really happy clients and it's, it's painful. It's like pulling teeth to try and get, um, a case study from them because they don't want to shout and scream about you, or to try to get a five-star review from them to leave a review. It's difficult. You almost need to incentivise them to go out the way to leave that five-star review. But if you have one unhappy customer, they're on Tripadvisor, they're on Trustpilot, they're on Yelp, they're on whatever platform can possibly... They can leave a one-star review on Facebook page, and they're shouting and screaming about how bad you are. How important is it to run digital PR campaigns when you do do a good job for a case study to amplify it? Because I'm telling you now, and you know firsthand, Peter, that they will amplify it when they've had a bad experience, but it's hard to amplify it when they've had a good experience. How important is it you go and get a good case study, client's really happy, try and get a digital PR campaign for that because... So you are doing the brand building and trying to strengthen up the brands.

Peter Victor Jones: Yeah, definitely. Um, so case studies and if the business wins any awards or can win any awards, that's a, a great... Another great thing to bring to the press as well to, again, get amplified. I don't think in this day and age you can leave the amplification of the good things in your business to chance. Um, you've got to proactively be doing it.

James Dooley: Yeah. And then on, on there, Ben, so if a, a... What split would you say come through that's mainly for the corporate brand looking for the exposure of the brand building versus the business owner, the entrepreneur? What split at present? Is it an 80/20 split where it's about the company and 20% about the entrepreneur, or what, what would you say at present of what's happening?

Ben Nicholls: I, I think it's probably about 60 to the big brands and then 40 to the, to the entrepreneurs. Look, we get... The entrepreneurs that do come to us for PR, they tend to be American. A lot of Americans promote themselves very well. They want that, that, that positive impact out there. I think it's quite a competitive country. There's a lot more people in the industry. So, to set yourself aside in America, you know, you, they really like to shout about themselves. I think us as Brits, we, we don't tend to do it as much. We don't tend to do it as well. And I think... I think that's a shame, really. I think I would encourage more Brits to start, you know, using PR to talk about their wins, to talk about, you know, the positive things that their businesses are doing because if you don't, your competitor probably will and, you know, they'll start eating up your, your search results and, and your results in, in, um, in the LLM. So, I think, you know, I would really encourage people to do that as, as entrepreneurs and founders. You know, get out there, um, talk about your business, whether it's... And, and, you know, you can talk about something on social media and it might get you picked up and a journalist might want to cover your story. So, there's lots of different ways into newspapers. Um, you know, we obviously provide that service, but I think if you get used to just talking about your business, whether it's on a podcast, on social media, in the press, I think that's the best thing you can do as a business owner.

James Dooley: Yeah. So basically, US entrepreneurs are willing to do the investment. UK, they're too frugal. They're too tightfisted. Get spending some money, you UK entrepreneurs. And Paul, over to you. Right. How important is it with regards to doing digital PR in making certain that you're doing proactive digital PR for your online reputation management than just leaving it to chance and leaving it that it's too late, that you're trying to be reactive and the stories are already there and they've already been picked up by the large language models and within Google?

Paul David Truscott: Yeah, you got to get ahead of it. So, um, I would also look at any trending... In trending stories, uh, and see if there's any way that you fit with, uh, what the, what the trend is. Um, that kind of fits in with that old sales, uh, sort of, uh, line, you know, that you meet the, the... Meet the person, the conversation they're having in their own head. So, if there's something that's a hot topic right now, is there any way that you can spin that in you to suit your own, um, either you as an entrepreneur or your business? Um, but yeah, you need to... You need to front-run it, really. Get in front of the, the news, as it were. And, um, that's what all of the... Not just the LLMs, but Google is hungry for that too. So, uh, the more newsworthy you can come up with a story about you, and as long as it's true, of course, um, the better it's going to be and put a nice positive spin on it. As you said earlier, James, people are very, very quick to talk about a negative experience they've had with you, but they're not so quick to talk about positive ones. So you need to be doing that yourself. You need to be proactive.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Anyone who's looking at this with regards to looking to strengthen your online reputation management, you're looking to maybe go with an ORM company. A lot of these ORM companies just go directly to digital PR agencies and double the prices. So maybe what you need to be doing now is be looking at brand building, not just for the business and the corporate brand, but also for you as being an individual. There's a whole episode. Check out the link in the description about how digital PR can help strengthen or create you a Google Knowledge Panel. For me, if you want to be successful in business, you as an entrepreneur, as well as your business, should both have Google Knowledge Panels, which will massively help start to strengthen your online reputation management. Ben, Paul, Peter, thank you very much for this episode.

Ben Nicholls: Thank you, James.

Paul David Truscott: Thanks, James.