Affiliate Nerd Out

Why Every Affiliate Site Needs Digital PR in 2024 with Gabriela Covay

March 20, 2024 Dustin Howes Season 1 Episode 78
Why Every Affiliate Site Needs Digital PR in 2024 with Gabriela Covay
Affiliate Nerd Out
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Affiliate Nerd Out
Why Every Affiliate Site Needs Digital PR in 2024 with Gabriela Covay
Mar 20, 2024 Season 1 Episode 78
Dustin Howes

Unlock the secrets to navigating the dynamic seas of affiliate marketing and digital PR with our latest podcast episode featuring the brilliant Gabriella Covey from Bright Valley Marketing. Gabby, shining with her unique blend of SEO savvy and ethical marketing, joins me, Dustin House, in a rich conversation that promises to leave you with a fresh perspective on elevating your brand's digital footprint. We'll share tales of overcoming the hurdles of Google’s algorithm updates and the gratifying journey toward crafting stories that capture media attention and audience hearts.

Our chat promises to be an illuminating beacon for businesses and marketers alike, as we delve into the transformative power of digital PR campaigns beyond just backlink acquisition. From the artistry of content creation to leveraging media appearances for bolstering brand credibility, Gabby offers her seasoned insights, laying out a roadmap for anyone aiming to achieve recognition in today's crowded online space. We'll also dissect the nuances of engaging with press releases and the strategic use of linking to amplify your site's authority and traffic.

Finally, gear up for a toolkit revelation, as we discuss the strategies and tools essential for a standout digital PR campaign. Whether you're on a shoestring budget or ready to invest, Gabby's advice on utilizing platforms like Ahrefs and Mention.com, alongside pearls of wisdom on campaign analysis, will empower you to kickstart your own digital PR endeavors. We cover ground from the initial steps of understanding the landscape to following industry mavericks, ensuring you're equipped with the knowledge to weave your own success stories. Tune in for this episode full of practical advice, inspiring anecdotes, and a glimpse into the vibrant world of Bright Valley Marketing.

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Unlock the secrets to navigating the dynamic seas of affiliate marketing and digital PR with our latest podcast episode featuring the brilliant Gabriella Covey from Bright Valley Marketing. Gabby, shining with her unique blend of SEO savvy and ethical marketing, joins me, Dustin House, in a rich conversation that promises to leave you with a fresh perspective on elevating your brand's digital footprint. We'll share tales of overcoming the hurdles of Google’s algorithm updates and the gratifying journey toward crafting stories that capture media attention and audience hearts.

Our chat promises to be an illuminating beacon for businesses and marketers alike, as we delve into the transformative power of digital PR campaigns beyond just backlink acquisition. From the artistry of content creation to leveraging media appearances for bolstering brand credibility, Gabby offers her seasoned insights, laying out a roadmap for anyone aiming to achieve recognition in today's crowded online space. We'll also dissect the nuances of engaging with press releases and the strategic use of linking to amplify your site's authority and traffic.

Finally, gear up for a toolkit revelation, as we discuss the strategies and tools essential for a standout digital PR campaign. Whether you're on a shoestring budget or ready to invest, Gabby's advice on utilizing platforms like Ahrefs and Mention.com, alongside pearls of wisdom on campaign analysis, will empower you to kickstart your own digital PR endeavors. We cover ground from the initial steps of understanding the landscape to following industry mavericks, ensuring you're equipped with the knowledge to weave your own success stories. Tune in for this episode full of practical advice, inspiring anecdotes, and a glimpse into the vibrant world of Bright Valley Marketing.

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Dustin Howes:

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd out. I'm your Nurturator, Dustin House. Spread that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me here alive every Tuesday and Thursday at 12.15 Pacific time, so stop by, put it on the calendar and hang out with me and my guests. And my guest today is Gabriella Covey, owner of Bright Valley Marketing. Welcome to the Nurtatorium, gabby.

Gabriela Covay:

Thank you for having me, Dustin.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome. We are not going to be in a live session today. This is previously recorded due to time constraints from our schedule, but that's not going to stop our conversation about digital PR, which I'm super excited to hear more about. If you would like to be a guest and sit in, gabby, see, go to DustinHousecom, slash, nerd and throw out a topic that you'd like to nerd out about. But without further ado here, gabby, who are you?

Gabriela Covay:

Well, hi everyone. My name is Gabriella Covey, I'm the founder and managing director of Bright Valley Marketing and we are a boutique SEO and digital PR link building agency based in Sacramento, California, but we serve clients nationwide, worldwide, universe-wide I don't know.

Dustin Howes:

Oh my gosh, I didn't realize you were so close to me. I'm in Placerville.

Gabriela Covay:

Oh yeah, we're like neighbors.

Dustin Howes:

We are digital neighbors for sure. We could have done this in person. That's hilarious, amazing. You and I have never met officially in person, but you've been on my radar for years. One thing that really stood out is the interview you did with authority hacker not too long ago. That was just really impressive. Just knowledge drops. I was excited that you wanted to be a part of this as well.

Gabriela Covay:

Thanks for watching it. I tried to provide as much value as I can and I felt like I rambled a lot, but I guess I threw in some golden nuggets here and there.

Dustin Howes:

I mean you have to ramble on a podcast that lasts an hour plus. It's inevitable, it's going to happen.

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, it was a pretty long podcast. It was my first podcast too, so I was like oh, oh, my god, you did so well.

Dustin Howes:

You're an intro, thank you, thank you. So tell us about Bright Valley Marketing. I want to start off with the name origin story. How did we get here?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, the name origin. I started my agency at the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. At the time, I was based in Santa Cruz, but my parents had moved to Sacramento. Sacramento is a valley.

Gabriela Covay:

So, I was like, hmm, what can I name the company? And I wanted it to have a very positive kind of uplifting connotation to it when people hear it. And I thought Bright Valley Marketing just had that ring to it. Bright like the sun, everything. There's a lot of sun influence in my life. I draw a lot of energy from being in the sun bright, uplifting colors. So all of that kind of tied into the name and it just felt really good and I just stuck to it ever since.

Dustin Howes:

Oh awesome. I love that story and I always feel so much warmer about a person that comes up with a name that has some kind of meaning behind it. These name origin stories can go a lot of different ways, but I love that natural aspect to marketing. I think there's a need for it. I've been into cold plunging lately. You sound like you're into the natural sunlight therapy.

Gabriela Covay:

You've been doing the cold plunges yet I've tried that before and I will not do that.

Dustin Howes:

Not again, okay.

Gabriela Covay:

I don't like it. I do sauna bathing, though Again, I'm drawn to the heat, to the warmth. I never like the cold. I know it's really good for you, but I just, for some reason, I just like. I'm like, ah, so cold. I can't put up with this. I can't do it. Can't do it, sorry.

Dustin Howes:

That's, that's all right. I would say Sunners, people that are loving the Sun, don't brag about it nearly as much as a peaceful that are getting in the cold baths, like they love to brag about how cool they are.

Gabriela Covay:

I know I just increased my biological age by like 10 years because I do this yeah yeah, everybody's got their thing, though, all right.

Dustin Howes:

So tell us about Bright Valley. What do you guys do and who you're serving out there?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, so we primarily focus on Digital PR at the moment and, of course, seo. We do a little bit of Google ads as well. We serve a lot of different customers, most industries actually e-commerce, home services, yeah, just food industry, just a variety of industries, except kind of like the more like questionable and ethical ones. And that's actually one of the reasons why I started my agency, because I wanted to focus on serving the clients that share the same values and, yeah, I have the same sort of perspectives as I do instead of the ones that are like out there to scam people. Or you know, because I've worked with clients like that at my previous agency that I worked with, where I was like the SEO director and I was just like I don't want to help you, I don't feel like you should. You know you don't deserve to be visible online and get more customers that you can scam. So I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we service just about everyone.

Gabriela Covay:

Affiliate sites, of course. Yeah, so I have a big soft spot for affiliate sites, especially now with with all the crazy algorithm updates that has made. You know, they've made affiliate sites just much harder to succeed online and created more challenges. Google's really cracked down on that. So so we love affiliates, manage a few affiliate sites ourselves, so yeah, so primarily SEO and digital PR. Yeah, we can talk a little bit more about digital PR fantastic.

Dustin Howes:

And what about your background in affiliate marketing? How did you get started with affiliate?

Gabriela Covay:

yeah, so I actually heard about the concept in 2016. Funnily enough, it was through a authority hacker, because they've been around for a while. Yeah, it got me with the YouTube video. I was like, oh, okay, it was an ad. I was like, okay, click. And then I bought the course and I've had it ever since and been part of their community and, but, you know, I just never had the time of day to like explore affiliate marketing. I kept myself in the loop over the years with with this type of marketing and it was only until I think, yeah, two years ago, that I that was like, okay, no, it's time to really focus on this, because this is, this is so awesome. You know, like I love the model and I feel like it has a lot of yeah, there's a lot of benefits to the model too, and so we started managing some affiliate sites ourselves and have applied the SEO strategies and techniques that we apply to other websites on those affiliate sites and, yeah, we're seeing some really good results.

Gabriela Covay:

So you know I don't want to, like you know, talk too much about my wins, because I know that there's so many people that have gotten hammered with with the latest algorithm updates and I don't want to be like, oh well, we're doing great, you know. But I think there's lessons to be learned from from the sites that are ex. Excelling during these, these difficult times online, and and and apply those same strategies to to the ones that are not doing as well.

Dustin Howes:

So there's there's a lot of learning to be, to be, games here awesome, and we'll talk a little bit more about those latest Google updates, because that is a big topic in the SEO space right now. But your background in affiliates much like many people in this career or in this field, if you will fell into affiliates eventually just and once you get into it, they grab it, sinks its claws into you and keeps you around. So it's it's a profitable game and your services seem to be really tapping into a market that is underserved, which is an incredible value. I don't know a lot of digital PR agencies and I'd love to know more about about what you guys do. So great starting point digital PR. Can you define it? What is it?

Gabriela Covay:

yeah, yeah. So, in a nutshell, digital PR is the process of getting your website featured in media outlets online, which usually results in a backlink to your website. And the way that you do that is by creating compelling content and pitching that content to journalists that are that are relevant, that would be interested in covering your campaign. So they pick up your press release. They're like, oh, this is great, this is interesting. And then they write up their own article, publish it on their media site CBS News, abc News, boston Herald, whatever it is, whatever outlet that they work for they write for and then, as a result, you get a juicy high dr white hat earned backlink that is so hard to replicate like your competitors, can't just go and talk to Boston Herald and say, hey, I'll pay you a thousand dollars, get me a link there.

Gabriela Covay:

You know, and some some media outlets do have like those sponsored sections, right, but they clearly disclose like this is sponsored content and I think the weight of those articles is much less than the ones that get featured on the home page of that media site with your article, with your backlinks. So there's a lot of differences there. But that's kind of digital PR in a nutshell.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, awesome. And for those people that are interested in digital PR, you mentioned, like the clientele that you were taking on, you had some affiliates, you have some brands and really not agnostic to one particular niche. You do e-com, you do nutrition. You stay away from romance, if you will, or maybe nefarious spots, but who are the clients that you're really like, honed in on and focused on helping out there with digital PR.

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, so we love lifestyle brands, travel websites, business websites as well, like I said, e-commerce just about. We know we're just, we don't have like a specific like type of client that we work with, but as long as you know you have, you have a professional looking website, we will work with you. If you fall into, you know, the niches that we generally work with, you can even be a brand new website. So there's a misconception that, oh well, you know, I just launched my website. You know, can I do digital PR?

Gabriela Covay:

And then a lot of people are like, well, no, I can't, because I need, you know, to have like 50 different articles on my site. I need this, I need that. You don't. You don't? You just need to have the basics contact page about page. You know, have your website look semi professional, have decent photos and that's it. You know, because the story that you you come up with for your digital PR campaign is is what's going to drive the results. Journalists care more about your story than they do about you. So that's a good thing, because because, yeah, the story will drive the results, so it'll work for those types of sites.

Dustin Howes:

Very interesting. And in affiliate marketing I don't take on clients unless they reach a certain threshold of income, because I want to make sure that their site is converting before we get affiliates driving traffic to there, because we don't want to make the affiliates mad in the long run. We want to make this partnership work with a high converting website. And you're saying digital PR, you don't necessarily have that kind of threshold to to work with a client.

Gabriela Covay:

No, because you're really dealing with journalists that are not going to be sitting around using SEO tools checking a brand and checking to see what your traffic metrics look like. And you know they're just. They're journalists, are like on the go. They don't have time for this. They don't even know how to do this. For the most part, you know they just really care about that story. If it speaks to them, they're going to just grab it, run with it and credit you, credit your website and yeah, usually they'll just do like a quick scandal Look at your website. Okay, there's an about page. There's like a contact page. There's an address Like so they look at the basic, like EAT type of stuff, but beyond that, like they're not going to, they're not going to spend hours like researching about you and checking all these details, like they don't care about that.

Dustin Howes:

So what I'm picking up is like the biggest benefit might be in the SEO space, but are there any like other benefits to digital PR? Besides getting more traffic to your site? What would these benefits be essentially?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, I mean these are sort of like. So obviously the big benefit is getting you know those backlinks right, those juicy do follow a backlinks from these media sites. That's good for SEO. But then there's also that, the indirect benefits of growing the brand signals. I call them brand signals, like getting your company name out there on the internet, being, you know, talked about by different media sites.

Gabriela Covay:

If you look at Tesla, nike, disney, you know big brands get talked about in the media all the time and then that kind of by doing digital PR continuously for your website, you are growing your brand signals. You're driving referral traffic to your website. You're gonna get people searching for your brand name online because they've read this article on this media site and they wanna kind of know more about you. So then you start getting more branded searches and that I mean from what I've been hearing from other SEO people. That has like an impact on your overall SEO. So if you get people searching for your brand, that's really important from an SEO standpoint. So it all kind of ties back into you building a solid brand that is not just like this, like tiny little you know website, but actually is growing invisibility and is, you know, playing in the big boys league, so to speak with the big brands that are always talked about.

Dustin Howes:

So, with the clients that you have, they have to have some kind of strong call to action, I would assume and is this something that your agency works with them on, before you release a campaign like this?

Gabriela Covay:

So with a campaign.

Gabriela Covay:

So you're not necessarily trying to sell anything, you are just you're producing content, data-driven content, and what we usually do is we create like a linkable asset that we put on the client's website, and that linkable asset is there to basically encourage journalists to link to it.

Gabriela Covay:

So in the end journalists will either they'll link to the client's homepage and also the linkable asset page, but on that page itself there's no like specific, like call to action. We don't we actually don't want that page to be salesy at all. We wanna get links to that page and funnel some of those, the links from the media sites, to the client's money pages. So within that linkable asset there might be like a little commentary section that the client produces but we usually produce to them, where we actually link out to some of their money pages in a very like subtle fashion and then that kind of pushes out the link juice to those pages, which those pages obviously have call to action buttons and buy now and or view on Amazon, et cetera. So we try to keep that page very neutral, very like non-salesy.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, that's not makes sense. What about the affiliates that you work with? How do you, how does this help affiliates in the digital PR space?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, so digital PR helps affiliates? I think a lot. You know because you, because digital PR, the types of links that you get from digital PR, are so legitimate. So, white hat, you're not going out and buying links, you're earning them. You're doing exactly what Google wants to see. So it adds a sense of, it creates a sense of legitimacy. You know you're doing things the right way, you're getting the right types of backlinks to your website and you're making Google happy. You're showing Google that you are a legitimate website. Okay, you are, you're real, you know you are trustworthy. You're trustworthy enough that these media sites are linking to you.

Gabriela Covay:

So I think that that you know again, it creates those, sends those brand signals to Google and shows Google that you're a real website. And of course so with digital PR it's not gonna solve, like your EAT issues whatsoever. It's gonna enhance them. But if you don't have like the right content on your website, if you're just doing like a product roundup review and you're faking it like you haven't actually reviewed the article or the products you haven't, you know you don't have original pictures of the product and all those things like this is not gonna help you. You know you need to have the basics in place, but this adds that extra level of legitimacy. It sort of pushes your website into the realms of real brands.

Dustin Howes:

Okay, gotcha. And the SEO value can't complain about that. That might be the biggest value, for if you're in the SEO game, you're getting domain links from huge domain authorities like 80s, 70s, right 90s sometimes, yeah, there's quite a few, the R90 plus, yeah.

Gabriela Covay:

So those are pretty big names and a lot of the times these journalists will refer to you in their articles like the experts at blah blah, blah, blah, say, blah blah, so like they actually refer to you as an expert, which is like wow, you know, like Google will see that website, refer to your website as an expert, and that's already that kind of just makes you an expert. Sort of you know, simplifying it.

Dustin Howes:

For sure. So the SEO value, without a doubt. What about affiliates that might have like listicles, where they have, you know, the five best brands for email marketing, five best companies, and they list them out in some beautiful piece of artwork for conversion of like sending people that are interested in that topic to the brands that they believe in and they're gonna earn affiliate commissions. Are you working with any affiliates that are using digital PR campaigns to drive more traffic to that page, to give it more authority?

Gabriela Covay:

So sort of like. Again, it's very indirect. So sometimes we will, you know, we will link out to the money pages within like a press release. We try to do it very subtly. So we try to encourage journalists to link to that page, but then it just comes off as like sort of almost like spammy, like to the discerning journalists, like they'll be, like why are they trying to link to, you know, like the best you know VPNs in 2024?

Gabriela Covay:

Like what does that have to do with you know? So we try to do that sometimes but overall, like we avoid doing that and we just try to get the journalists to link to the homepage or the linkable asset page and again then in that linkable asset page the client can just link out to their money pages, or I mean, we don't recommend doing this, but it's up to the client to do this. After six months, after a year, whatever a couple months, they can just redirect that entire, you know linkable asset page to their money page.

Dustin Howes:

So oh, excellent. Okay, so the site that you should be using digital PR to link to should be informational, not transactional, is?

Gabriela Covay:

what I'm gathering Exactly. Yes, yes.

Dustin Howes:

Beautiful, all right, and you mentioned something about TV as well. Like there are huge benefits to getting on TV, not only for sourcing the news outlets that will provide articles and backlinks to you later, but what are some of those other benefits of getting on TV?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, you know, getting on TV is a sort of a byproduct of a really good campaign. A journalist will Sometimes come to us and they're like oh, you know, is, is the, is the spokesperson from the press release available for an interview today in 10 minutes? More like we're like how to text the client and everything. So they like to move very quickly. But so when the clients do get on TV, that is like a, you know, they can literally take that TV segment, put it on their website, because oftentimes these journalists will then Publish the, the TV segment, on their website or like on YouTube or something. So so then you, as like the, the client, you can, you can take that, put it on your website, say, as featured on TV, like I don't know, you can really just play up the brand signals, create a in the press page on your website.

Gabriela Covay:

We have that for all the affiliate websites that we we manage and Solid in the press, you know, like tab in the navigation. We we show off, we show off, you got to show off, we're everywhere that you've been featured and get people to trust you. Because when people start trusting you, google starts to trust you. It's, it's just, it's all kind of like the same. So you got to, got to get comfortable speaking on TV if that opportunity comes, because it's, it's, it's, you know it's so, it's so priceless beautiful.

Dustin Howes:

I just be ready for it. When you run these campaigns and For those that are out there that might be on a budget, what are we looking at for a good digital campaign? What is what? Is it gonna cost somebody to run a campaign with you in this kind of sense?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, so we have performance pricing. So we are performing, or our pricing depends on the outcome of the campaign. Like if we land you a ton of links, then you know we charge a little bit more but, it starts at six thousand dollars. Six thousand dollars.

Dustin Howes:

Oh, wow, okay, and for that makes total sense. I mean I love that you have a model in the performance basis because landing those big ones Is it harder for you guys to land big ones for smaller brands? Or like what's the, what's the determining factor of getting the really big ones?

Gabriela Covay:

The really the big results. It's the story. Okay down to the story. The website again doesn't matter. Your website, dustin. Sorry, it just does not matter.

Dustin Howes:

But I work so hard on my website.

Gabriela Covay:

It's all about the story.

Gabriela Covay:

Okay, all right you know, if we've got a really good story, you have. I mean, we recently just landed, like it was, a hundred and eighty six backlinks for a Pizza of a company from a, from a, and like three TV segments. It was just crazy. It just kept like coverage just kept coming in. So it was just a really fun story. Fun stories tend to do really well Upbeat, light-hearted, but also kind of like the negative ones too, so kind of like the polar opposite types. So if you've got something that's like bland and kind of like not interesting, that's down the middle, you generally don't get as much coverage. So but it really comes, oh you know, comes down to the story, and if you've got a good story you can get so much coverage awesome and this what defines a good story.

Dustin Howes:

Like who? What have you seen? Is that like successful, good stories?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, absolutely so. A successful story is something that is newsworthy, that is relevant to society, that is interesting. That is, you know, it creates a talking point right, that it gets people talking. Like if a journalist runs with a story, we ideally want to have a story that will create a lot of Spark, a lot of online dialogue. It will get people debating in the comments section yeah, I agree with this.

Gabriela Covay:

Oh, no, this is so wrong. Like, why did you know Sacramento come out at number three for, like the, the, the best cities to, I don't know, started business or something? So you, you know, you want to spark debate, you want to get people talking, you want to get people sharing that content, because the more shareable your story is, the more engaging it is, the, the better it makes the journalists look. So if you can make the journalists look really good and you can give them a really interesting, compelling, a topic that will get their readers like, engaged and sharing the story with everyone, then that's, that's a winner, because journalists like to do that. Journalists also like stories that help them feel like proud and Like oh, here you know, our, our, our state came out number one for blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and then they, they like to have that, that that sense of pride, and share that with their audience to make their you know, because a lot of these journalists work for regional media outlets.

Gabriela Covay:

So, they like to kind of, they like to show off kind of.

Dustin Howes:

You know yeah, I can get that, and so the campaigns that you run To have a successful story, when you guys do find that success story. You mentioned that pizza oven company with with three like plugs on TV. It's incredible. But are you guys running that campaign that that whole time? Or is the company taking over at some point to Log these things in to to book these kinds of sessions?

Gabriela Covay:

Nope, it's all hands off. So all the the client has to do is just approve the press release and the linkable asset, get that linkable asset uploaded to their website. But we can even do that for them. If it's like a WordPress website, if it's like a custom CMS, then we just hand it off to the client for their dev to upload. But after that it's like pretty hands off, like everything. Just we handle everything, the outreach and you know, just monitoring results, monitoring all the media mentions and reporting it back to the client.

Dustin Howes:

Oh, how do you, how do you guys monitor that Do? Is there? Certain tools are used, besides maybe, like you know, google. Alerts oh alert yeah, they're terrible.

Gabriela Covay:

They don't pick up, so none of the media monitoring tools will pick everything up at the right time. So we use like I think we use three or four different tools Hrfs, alerts but also the main tool that we use is the internal tool, that from our media database. Cision media database has their own like media monitoring tool, so we generally use that. We use mention calm Mention comm is probably something that your listeners might be interested in. I think their plans are like. They started like $80 a month or something like that, but of course there's, you know, google alerts. Obviously that's free Hrfs, so you just want to get your, your plug in your brand name, your website name, into all these tools. So that way you're you're you're checking what coverage comes in when it comes in.

Dustin Howes:

Oh man, I am a Semrush user and but hrefs, I'm accustomed to it. There's just so many tools Within that tool, those tools, that it is overwhelming. I've never even recognized that that's a possibility.

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they're always like releasing new Functionalities. I can hardly keep up.

Dustin Howes:

It's tough. It really is, especially in the SEO realm, like if you're, if you're playing around with it, all right, so you've, you've got these campaigns. Start out with brands that are ready to invest and and tell that good story. What about those brands that are a little bit on the budget savvy side? Is there any way for them to maybe upskill to try a digital PR campaign on their own?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, I mean you can, so I. For those types of websites, what I recommend doing is looking at existing campaigns that are being run by other companies and sort of reverse engineering. If you look at one of my favorite sites is CNBC. They publish studies, surveys, data, campaigns all the time from other companies and you can just literally follow their Facebook page and so every day they're publishing oh, a new study shows that, I don't know, pennsylvania workers are blah, blah, blah blah.

Gabriela Covay:

So if you look at what's being done right now and what's getting coverage, you can serve reverse engineer and start to see different trends Like oh OK, well, this campaign, I see that the campaign angle is really really negative and that got people talking, so that's probably why maybe it was successful, or this one had this angle and this one did this, and so you start to reverse engineer and maybe even use chatGPT and plug in all the different studies and campaigns that are currently being done and then ask chatGPT, what are the trends that you find for these campaigns? Like, what makes these campaigns similar? What do you think? Like you can play around with that. I love using chatGPT. It's like my little marketing assistant.

Dustin Howes:

Everybody loves playing around with it. Not everybody is adept at the prompting of these. I mean, it's tough if you're a beginner using chatGPT for these kind of functions. I'm glad you're playing around with it though.

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, and also just, and I wanted to share too. So if you're trying to do this yourself, you can use chatGPT and ask it to play the role of a journalist and say hey, you're a journalist, you work for a major consumer media outlet. If you come across this story and then you include the story that you want to run with, would you feature it on your website? Why, or why not Like what makes this a captivating story or what makes this story not good? So you can kind of just have chatGPT provide you with those insights and I mean it's really hopeful.

Dustin Howes:

That's an incredible value add for those out there trying to do this on a budget and getting started in the affiliate realm. Especially and particularly, I'm interested in using this entire strategy on my software, AppyStash, which would make a lot of sense to try to get the backlinks as we're growing the SEO, so I'm really interested in playing around with this all together.

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, yeah, it would be good. Your website would work really well. You can do business-related campaigns. I think that would really well.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha, how about affiliate programs? Has anybody been creative enough to say, hey, we want more affiliates signing up and we want high-quality affiliates signing up and we want to rank higher for best affiliate programs somewhere? Have you run into this circumstance where brands use digital PR to promote their affiliate program?

Gabriela Covay:

Not personally. No, I haven't. Yeah, because the primary goal of our campaigns is really to just drive backlinks, get backlinks to the clients' home page and the linkable asset page those are the main goal and then getting those backlinks to their home page will have a positive effect on their entire website, so they can start ranking higher for those pages as well.

Dustin Howes:

OK. Ok, that makes sense as we wind things down here. One of the last topics is digital PR and getting started. What's the first thing somebody can do before coming to you to get this campaign started? What do they need to work on first?

Gabriela Covay:

I think what's really important is to familiarize yourself with what digital PR is and what isn't, and there's so many different articles out there online that you can literally just Google digital PR or watch my authority hacker podcast, I think.

Dustin Howes:

I kind of I think you did a good job here.

Gabriela Covay:

Thank you. Yeah, so I think, because there's a lot of misconceptions too about what digital PR is, but then what it actually isn't. There's just you have to kind of like understand the fundamentals a little bit so that you can better understand the process and the results that you can expect and whatnot. Yeah, so I think I think that's where you can just get started. Just just do a little bit of research, Follow some thought leaders on LinkedIn. There's a lot of people, a lot of different agencies that do digital PR and they use LinkedIn a lot.

Dustin Howes:

OK, awesome. Does your agency have an affiliate program, because I've got a lot of affiliates that could use your service.

Gabriela Covay:

Let's talk after this, after this podcast sounds good, all right.

Dustin Howes:

Last, lastly, how do we connect with you, gabby?

Gabriela Covay:

Yeah, so you just shoot me an email, gabby G-A-B-B-Y at brightvalleymarketingcom, or just visit our website and fill out the contact form brightvalleymarketingcom. And yeah, you can follow me on YouTube. I've been trying to publish different little videos here and there in my spare time, so hopefully those are people like those, so you can follow me there. Linkedin as well. Just search for my name. So that's kind of where I hang out.

Dustin Howes:

I don't do.

Gabriela Covay:

TikToks and all that stuff. Too much work. You're not doing the.

Dustin Howes:

TikTok OK.

Gabriela Covay:

I'm too old for that. I'm too old for that.

Dustin Howes:

That's insane. That's insane talk Did. Tiktok is hot for affiliate right now. Like you, better get into it before you fall behind, and it could be even great for those influencers that are interested in expanding their reach as well, so it could be something hot for you.

Gabriela Covay:

Thanks for a tip.

Dustin Howes:

Well, thank you for all these tips. Really appreciate your time and thanks for being here Signing off for Affiliate Nerd Out. Keep on recruiting folks and we'll see you out there.

Gabriela Covay:

Thanks guys.

Digital PR With Bright Valley Marketing
Affiliate Marketing and Digital PR
Benefits of Successful Digital PR Campaigns
Digital PR Tools and Strategies