E204: Christopher Panteli

Carrianne Dukes [00:00:04]:
Hi there. I'm Carrianne Dukes, the senior marketing manager at eComOne and organiser of this podcast. Richard is still in Thailand at the world's biggest SEO conference, and that's why you have me introducing this episode today. Welcome to episode 204 of the eCom@One podcast. In this episode, Richard speaks with Christopher Panteli, the Co-Founder of Linkifi, to talk about everything digital PR. They talk the impact of good digital PR on ecommerce businesses, the most effective strategies for getting media coverage, how to use digital PR to boost your SEO efforts, how digital PR brings credibility to your business, how to build those relationships to secure those all important links. And, of course, there is so much more in this one. If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast so you are always the first to know the latest developments in ecommerce.

Carrianne Dukes [00:01:06]:
Now let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Hill [00:01:12]:
Hey, Chris. How are you doing? Hey, Richard. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Doing good. You? No problem at all. I'm really good. I'm really good.

Richard Hill [00:01:18]:
I think the last time I saw you was on a rooftop in Chiang Mai.

Christopher Panteli [00:01:22]:
Yes. Silent. Times. And we're going back again in a in a week's time?

Richard Hill [00:01:27]:
We we will have been and gone by the time this one goes live. So, yeah, looking forward to catching up in person again, but, yeah, me and Chris met, yeah, with 12 months to the day almost, wouldn't it? Yeah. Bloody hell. I had a good chat chat on the digi digital PR, so I thought let's get Chris on.

Christopher Panteli [00:01:42]:
That's it.

Richard Hill [00:01:42]:
Yep. So before we get into the sort of good stuff, I think it'd be great for you to introduce yourself, Chris, and how you got into the world of ecommerce digital PR.

Christopher Panteli [00:01:50]:
Yeah. So my name is Chris Pantelli. I'm the cofounder of Linkify. So we're a, digital PR agency, focusing on high authority editorially earned media links and, coverage. And I suppose I got into digital PR, quite organically. I had a a small affiliate site, and I was doing, PR link building for myself via the very, very recently now defunct HARO, which that just made an announcement. Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:02:23]:
I think yesterday or the day before. So for anyone that knows, this is like, an inbound request platform which connects journalists with subject experts in order to provide commentary, and then, hopefully, they'll they'll feature you within their article and you can win a a link back to your website. So I was doing this for my own website. That's when I came across my now business partner. He had some clients that, were interested in this sort of link building, this this very white hat, very high authority premium tier 1 tier 1 links. And I was able to build his clients some links, via this this method of inbound PR on Harrow. We saw a demand for it, and we we just grew from there.

Richard Hill [00:03:08]:
Yeah. So Arrow's gone. Well, that I think we've got about a month left, haven't you, on your subscription or something like that. Did I read yesterday, day before? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All all changed there. So, obviously, worked, I've worked in the sort of link building and digital PR space for quite some time.

Richard Hill [00:03:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's who's he? Who's your business partner? I do I might know. I'm not sure if I know him or not.

Christopher Panteli [00:03:31]:
Nick Nick Biggs. He's the tall, handsome one.

Richard Hill [00:03:35]:
Of course.

Christopher Panteli [00:03:35]:
Was he there?

Richard Hill [00:03:36]:
No idea.

Christopher Panteli [00:03:38]:
I think he was on the roof with us. Maybe I was the one chatting if I'd had a couple of drinks.

Richard Hill [00:03:44]:
I'm not sure. I must have met Nick. Yeah. I must have done. Yeah. Is he easy to get you next Yeah. Is he with you? Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:03:49]:
Yeah. You go in that in force.

Christopher Panteli [00:03:51]:
No. He keeps me, he keeps me under control.

Richard Hill [00:03:54]:
So I think, you know, if we did when when e obviously, our our listeners, ecom store owners, marketers, we talk about digital PR. I think there's maybe a little bit of confusion about what it actually is. You know, it's sort of people thought it's link building, you know, and there's obviously it is there's an element of that, you know, but it's it's a certain type of link. You know, what makes digital PR so important to ecom businesses and, you know, and how how is it sort of different to sort of what a lot of people might call sort of traditional link building?

Christopher Panteli [00:04:25]:
Yeah. I think it's really multifaceted, in in today's climate. With the onset of AI now, SearchGPT, large language models, the prevalence of of search outside of just Google, It's really, really becoming important for us to make our brand visible everywhere and to the best of our ability to control the narrative of of what we want search and AI to be surfacing about, about who we are as a business, as a retailer, as, you know, as an ecom store. We wanna be able to provide as much information that we can feed feed that into into the beast as it were. Traditional link building is very much a pay to play, sort of scenario where you might be doing guest posts. You might be doing niche edit niche edits, buying from from vendors. I've got nothing against that. That's not what what we do.

Christopher Panteli [00:05:25]:
I think there is a place for that as as a holistic sort of link building strategy. But digital PR provides so many benefits in the sense that you are having your brand featured and talked about in tier 1 premium news publications, which is providing authority, to you and your business. It gives you an element of control over that narrative, albeit, you know, you do need to, have something newsworthy. But it but it gives you more control than just buying a guest poster. And you said it. And we're appearing in we're aligning ourselves with with the creme de la creme of of publications and authority, which in turn is what the large language models are are crawling, reading, learning. People aren't just searching now for products on on Google. They're they're asking for where they can search for on the, the AI, the search GPTs, the Google Geminis.

Christopher Panteli [00:06:20]:
And the more information we can we can feed, the better. And obviously, the, you know, the added benefit is we're gonna we're gonna try and get that juicy backlink as well so that we can still Yeah. Perform well in Google.

Richard Hill [00:06:32]:
So quite a few bits there then, Chris. I think ultimately you we're trying to get our clients, you know, on higher authority size, but the size definitely that are used and getting crawled by the large language models, and obviously that's you know, probably wouldn't use that large language model term 18 months ago. We probably didn't mention that on the rooftop back a year ago, even. No. But it it is changing, isn't it? Obviously, the whole, you know, you look at page 1 of Google, we've got the AI overview, for example, on the the majority of searches, maybe not all econ searches, but, you know, quite a few. So we're trying to get on high authority domains, you know, which, you know, is an element of traditional link building, but more on a from a natural standpoint by creating, obviously, as we'll we'll get into that, but by creating, you know, something that's genuinely newsworthy that somebody wants to link to or discuss or, list or what obviously, there's a few different ways. But how do you stand out, I think, is is the thing I'm interested in because, you know, you're reaching out to maybe you you think you're creating a half decent story as a as somebody that's listening, and I think this is the challenge that a lot of people have trying to get placements on these bigger on these bigger, publications, coming up with an idea, and then getting a publication to accept it. You know, how do you really stand out in a very crowded marketplace? You know, most ecom stores, there's 1 they're one of maybe 50 people vying for, you know, whether that's page 1 listings or whatever that it is.

Richard Hill [00:07:59]:
But, ultimately, you're probably one of half a dozen trying to get, those placements on the high authority domains. How do you stand out, 1, sort of when you're reaching out to publications, but, really, you're just how do you stand out full stop?

Christopher Panteli [00:08:13]:
Yeah. It's a great question, and and it's not easy. SEOs have hijacked digital PR. Suppose it would have been the last bastion of, like, good link building, and, I think that's ultimately probably a large reason why Harrow has shut down just because of the spam. We're we're living in an era now of brand building. Like, you know, this is the ultimately, these are gonna be the ecom stores, the businesses, the online properties that survive. We need to be building brands, maintaining a brand. And the the way that we do that or one of the important factors of that is is digital PR.

Christopher Panteli [00:08:51]:
Getting our name out there, being in multiple places, driving referral traffic, driving brands branded search as well, by making us, like, making everybody aware who we are. So how do we stand out is a good question. If there's multiple, you know, ecom stores Uh-huh. In in the chasing us

Richard Hill [00:09:09]:
there, aren't you? You tell me I go back to that in a bit because I know I guess that's the secret that's the secret sauce, isn't it? Obviously, ultimately having those, relationships goes goes a long way. But we'll we'll come back to it a bit, but, obviously, we know it's not as straightforward as right. We're just we're just magically caught with a good idea, and then people are gonna link to us. You know, getting your brand, your ecom store, sort of digital PR ready. Let's talk about that because I think this is something that, you know you know, I know we we've we've spoken about before and before we came on. They're getting getting sites, getting brands ready that actually people want to relate, connect, link to. You know, what advice can you give to our listeners about getting your ecom store ready for digital PR?

Christopher Panteli [00:09:51]:
Okay. Yeah. This this is a great question, and and this is ultimately the starting point, which which any any ecom store owner that's listening now can start looking, at their at their business and the and the way that they're set up and set themselves up for success for potential future PR efforts. And as well, it's it has benefits, outside of just being PR ready because these things that you can do, will will go to, driving more organic traffic by growing your EAAT in your authority in the eyes of Google. So it's it's so many benefits to, like, a a single cause as it were. So first and foremost, we need to be looking at what niche we're operating in, and what Yeah. Broader, topicality that that niche has. So for example, if you are in, an ecom selling any sort of, vitamin, dietary stuff, anything of that nature, then we wanna be finding an an authoritative, person in the in the health space, ideally with credentials and a and a wider web visibility, and have that person in some way aligned to your website.

Christopher Panteli [00:11:03]:
So this could be somebody that you have as a as a guest writer, as a contributing editor, an author. It could even be someone who just fax checks articles. You'll you'll you'll see some of the big websites, health line, some of the big finance websites. They'll often do this. It'll be written by a writer or maybe fact checked by, like, a CFP or a medical doctor. Good websites with good content probably are already doing this, because it's just such a, you know, an an intuitively good thing to do. It makes sense. But if you're not doing that and you're in a in a niche which logically lends itself to, a broader, topicality.

Christopher Panteli [00:11:46]:
For so for example, if you're selling, clothing of any sort, apparel, whatnot, if you can find, you know, a fashion expert or a fashion writer. Yep. If you're in the niche of, let's say, sporting goods, sportswear, then a qualified fitness instructor. Yep. So it this this is a logical sort of expert that aligns with most niches and have that person on your website somehow visible on the about page, whatnot, contributing some, either content or like reviewing content. This sets you up perfectly to then start thinking about the sorts of either inbound requests you can answer to journalists Mhmm. Or wider campaigns where you're gonna come up with a story yourself and outreach to journalists. Because you've got to remember the most important thing is journalists, they are writing for their bosses in order to drive clicks and traffics to the articles that they publish.

Christopher Panteli [00:12:43]:
They're not bothered about giving us links or giving ecom stores coverage. So that's where we have to align our interest with theirs and give them newsworthy and credible stories. And the way that we do that is we take our, ecom niche, we align it to that broad topicality with expertise, and then we can come up with a story that will interest the journalists and make sense for them to be publishing that from the expert that we've that we're gonna, put that content forward from.

Richard Hill [00:13:16]:
So aligning with a already credible source or a credible person in the niche, what about trying to I'm thinking of of the listeners now that thinking, okay, that's great. You know, we can, you know, we probably oh, well, I was at a conference last year, and we met, this influencer that's got a 100,000 followers, and they're out there published here here here, and I know that John in sales spoke to him quite a lot. You know, I'm I'm getting carried away here, but, ultimately, you know, you can connect with these people, and then, obviously, there's probably a some sort of fee as to have them as what maybe, like, a brand ambassador or that's probably a step too far. But let's say the brands that are thinking they wanna do it themselves without using a third party sort of brand ambassador, spokesperson.

Christopher Panteli [00:13:57]:
Mhmm.

Richard Hill [00:13:58]:
What's probably a good starting point for them where, you know, it's more like, well, know, as a team, you know, the MD, he's quite vocal of the he's he speaks at a few of these events, and, obviously, that wraps in then there's probably 2 questions in 1, but EAAT obviously making using, the different signals from branding people as opposed to products. You know? What would you say would be a good start point, to branding people that already work in an organization?

Christopher Panteli [00:14:26]:
Yeah. That that's a really good point. And and I would say you can definitely do that because the the lay of the land now with these, with the way that the journalists are working is it is more important than ever now for them to be using verifiable people. Okay? So long gone are the days where sort of dodgy backstreet affiliate sites could just be pitching as like fake AI bot personas and and win links. Right? The journalists wanna verify these people. And if you have, you can definitely look to your own team. Okay? So, we recently talked to one of the, one of the guys, who works for a big clothing company, in the UK, and they're quite fitness orientated. And they have loads of people that work for the company in many different positions, SEO, marketing, sales, you know, customer support.

Christopher Panteli [00:15:15]:
And these guys in their spare time, in their, you know, personal lives, they're into fitness. Maybe they they Yeah. Fitness classes and stuff. So you can definitely look to your own team. I would just suggest that you need to make sure that that is, that's tracking through across, like, social profiles.

Richard Hill [00:15:29]:
Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:15:30]:
And you're yeah. You're you're telling that story in in multiple places as well. Yeah. And then you can be using these people as part of your PR outreach as well.

Richard Hill [00:15:39]:
So what might be a good exercise, you know, listeners, is to, you know, be thinking of, you know, if it's you that's listed now as the MD or senior marketer or shareholder in the business, maybe do a do a Google of your own name, you know, and see, you know, whether that's, you know, your own name plus the industry you're in and seeing what comes up in that first 10 spots and think, well, actually, you know, we could easily you know, I could easily create an account here and manage that and, you know, and add content to, you know, insert whether that's a, you know, an Instagram account where I could, you know, get Marks and do it to help me a bit more with my LinkedIn profile and just give my my LinkedIn profile and all that. You know, it's quite fairly straightforward, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So go on.

Christopher Panteli [00:16:17]:
And you can and you can pop that into your into your LinkedIn as well. You'll see this from many founders. You know, they'll say I'm the founder of whatever the company is, and I'm a such and such nerd or, you know, such and such expert. Take if you can if you can portray that about yourself that you have that expertise within that broader, like, niche topicality of what your ecom store is operating in, then that then gives you the ability to talk publicly to journalists about your company and that you have some credibility and expertise within the space that you're selling those products to your customers in. So it it makes sense, and it's good for it's good for business as well.

Richard Hill [00:16:54]:
Yeah. I mean, I would say go and have a look at Chris on LinkedIn, because if you you know, Chris is doing this, aren't you, for your business? You know, you're very active on personal brand perspective, you know, talking about the different things in the in the market that's happening, the changes, you know, different case studies that you're working on, different client in different industries. You know? So, obviously, you're getting picked up from that, you know, as an expert, no doubt, and then getting asked to come on podcast like this, for example, you know, because you're the expert in digital PR, etcetera, etcetera, how about you know, along those lines sort of things. So yeah. Yeah. I think quite a lot of founders can be quite sort of, oh, I'm not sure about you know, you know, but it can be as simple as having a, you know, a page about the founder or a page about the team, the specific people in the business that are the authority building that authority. And, obviously, you start. It doesn't mean day 1, you're gonna be on a 100 podcasts and be featured in 50 publications.

Richard Hill [00:17:45]:
It starts with that first, you know, that first bit of media, you know, and then looking at LinkedIn, for example. So, okay, so we've now identified that we've got, you know, a a subject matter expert in the business or working with somebody outside the business. You know, we know that, you know, we're you know, where we sell a certain type of products that stick with the health niche maybe, for example. And there's a couple of things, directions really. It's obviously building relationships with the journalists, for example, in that niche. You know, how do you approach sort of building that act? Obviously, you've been doing this a while. No doubt you've got this massive advantage because it's your business, you know, that you build relationships out. But what would you say to listeners that are trying to start out and build relationships with journalists? How what's the best way to do that in their niche? Now you might be looking for an SEO boost, a down to earth digital PR campaign to share your story, or maybe just some straightforward technical help to amp up your performance.

Richard Hill [00:18:41]:
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Christopher Panteli [00:19:12]:
Okay. Yeah. Again, great question. So when it comes to digital PR, there's there's 2 sorts. You 2 main sorts. Inbound, which is where the journalists are actively looking for experts on stories that they're working on. And they will post requests to say, hey. I'm looking for a health expert or a fitness expert to

Richard Hill [00:19:33]:
Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:19:33]:
Provide 1 or 2 lines of commentary on this article that I'm writing. And then you can provide those comments, and hopefully, they'll quote you and they'll link back to your site. That's inbound. And obviously, the main facilitator of that used to be Harrow, which went to Connectively and now defunct. But that Yeah. By no means means that the game is over. There are Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:19:54]:
Totally. Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:19:55]:
There are multiple, platforms, press plugs, quoted, response source, journalists using

Richard Hill [00:20:02]:
That's what we use. We we we pay for response source. Yep.

Christopher Panteli [00:20:04]:
Yeah. No. That's good. Your your adcom's one of us. I guess. Yeah. Journalists will use a hashtag driller request directly on, x threads as well is really popular for for journalists. And you can follow journalists that you know write for publications within your specific niche.

Christopher Panteli [00:20:24]:
Set alerts as well on social. They'll they'll often post their request directly. This is a great way to start to get to know the journalists that are operating in in your beat. Start Yep. Either, you know, from the founder that's positioned themselves as that that expert or get have that person on your team start scouring for these requests and just responded. If you've got a good setup, if you're clearly, you know, an expert working for that ecom store and the journal can see that, at some point, you're gonna do a good pitch, impress the journalist, and then they're likely to come back to you to ask if you've got more comments. You'll get better at that. You'll hone your craft.

Christopher Panteli [00:21:00]:
You'll start winning that to getting coverage. And the other side is outbound. So that's rather than us waiting for the journalists to say, you know, I'm look I'm working on the story. I'm looking for comments. This is where we're gonna take our story, so it gives us a bit more control. We can utilize internal data, internal, information, come up with a really clever newsworthy story that resonates well with our brand, and we can go and outreach to journalists that we think will be receptive to that story. And the fact that you've already started on that inbound, warming up some of those journalists operating in your beat, it makes it much easier to run a successful outbound campaign because you've already got some warm journalists in your network Yeah. Which are likely to be receptive to a story.

Richard Hill [00:21:44]:
So two sides, inbound and outbound. But I know from experience that, so you built your list. You've got this amazing story. Well, you think you have Yeah. You you've contacted 50, a 100 journalists and absolute crickets. Nothing is happening. You know, what would you say to those guys that are thinking, well, I've tried a bit. I've tried a I've tried a bit of that.

Richard Hill [00:22:06]:
It's a bit like I've tried a bit of FDI. I've tried a bit of PPC. But, obviously, that that that that sort of those relationships are really getting noticed in the inbox, really getting, you know, some some next steps and and responses. What sort of tips and sort of experience can you share, you know, with the listeners about really getting a response really in the inbox, and getting your article piece of work covered?

Christopher Panteli [00:22:32]:
If I if I knew the the holy grail answer to that, I there is so much luck involved in it. All I can do is just give you some advice on our best practices. But, yeah, I mean, there is you were gonna have those those campaigns where you think Yeah. This is a great story. This is the most interesting thing ever to happen. It's resonating with the news cycle now because Yeah. I'm in an ecom store that sells weight loss powder, and Beyonce has just been featured in the news. I've taken it to my phone.

Christopher Panteli [00:23:03]:
It's a dream come true. I've got a list of a 100 of the best journalists and you don't get anything. Yeah. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There is such a large element of luck to it. The some of the key things to to to do if you are gonna do this on your own. First of all, email deliverability. So this often gets overlooked and we're having huge monumental changes to email.

Christopher Panteli [00:23:24]:
Mhmm. Microsoft and Google Google Google. So you need to be checking your your settings. Don't use your main domain. For the love of God, don't use your main domain. You have a, you know, a secondary domain, which is similar, 301 redirect to your, actual domain. So if the journalist checks out that domain, they do land on your website, but you're you're protecting the health of that domain. You need to be regularly check checking settings, demark, d k I m, all of these things that I don't really understand, but check that.

Christopher Panteli [00:23:55]:
Speak to your host. They'll do, like, 99% of this stuff for you for free. Simple Google search, what settings do I need? And you can speak to your host provider and say, hey. Can you make sure these settings are on this domain Yeah. Email? So that's the first thing. You wanna be tracking open rates as well. You wanna be doing really clear and concise subject lines on what your story is. Journalists are busy people.

Christopher Panteli [00:24:18]:
They they often don't reply. I mean, you've probably experienced this. You'll you'll do a campaign. You won't hear anything. Then all of a sudden, you'll see the story go live. So they've they've picked up with it and they've run with it, but they don't even bother to email you and tell you. So you want short concise subject lines. You want newsworthy interesting, stories that that that align with that journalist and what they do.

Christopher Panteli [00:24:43]:
So if you operate a health related ecom store and you've managed to put together a really good story and you've got a doctor to put some quotes in it and it's really, really, really good and clever, you don't wanna be emailing travel journalists because Yeah. They don't write about that. And, it's not gonna land. You'll get flagged as spam and you'll just diminish any future, campaigns that you run. So you wanna be hyper targeted, personalized, short, snappy, to the point, interesting stories, really well clearly defined, target list. And Yeah. You wanna be 100% psychologically prepared to fail, fail, fail, fail, and then eventually, you know, you'll land.

Richard Hill [00:25:27]:
So do you recommend having I mean, obviously, there's there's an option to obviously for our listeners to use services like yourself, and we'll we'll talk about that more. But for those that maybe wanna scale more internally and and do this themselves, do you do you sort of have, dedicated people or recommend dedicated people for the, you know, building of the list and and contacting, you know, contacting potential, what do you call it, potential sites and somebody that's focused on the writing, somebody that's focused on the networking and the building of the relationships and, like, various because they're very different skills, aren't they? Obviously, trying to get you know, building a database of very high end journalists can take some doing, whereas certain elements of what you said are easier than others. Obviously, the technical side, you know, I wouldn't have a clue with that, but I've got a technical team that, you know so how do how do you structure your team? Have you got a specialist in each area?

Christopher Panteli [00:26:21]:
Yeah. So Yeah. The people that know how to handle each area do each each area. But to speak to your point of, like, people doing it on their own, I definitely think there will be ecom store founders owners out there that are, like, way more set up for for successful PR than than they even know. Yeah. And and for these guys, I think it is a good idea to to give it a try on your own. There's some, like, super low cost entry level platforms you can use like Crowley. All in one, I think, like, $99 a month or a $199 a month, something like that.

Christopher Panteli [00:26:53]:
So that compared that to, like, the the software we use to to to gather journalist emails, This is pretty decent for, like, an all in one package. And if you let's say you've got an ecom store and you've found let's sell let's say, for example, you've got an ecom store that sells, bicycle equipment, And you've got a cofounder or a founder of that company that used to the previously won the Tour de France, let's say. You guys are really set up to go and give this a go for yourself because you've got such a great profile, and this is what the journalists love. I bet you've got some great stories that, I bet you can come up with something really interesting. Just make sure you build a really, really good list. You can manually add to that list by doing a Google search on your keyword. Look for high end news publications that have covered that in the last few months. Just really, really hyper focus.

Christopher Panteli [00:27:45]:
Pick, you know, 10, 20, 30 journalists. Come up with a good story. Position it from your ex Tour de France co winning cofounder.

Richard Hill [00:27:52]:
Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:27:53]:
And give it a go because you you've already got so many of the ingredients there, for a successful campaign. If you if you wanna try and do this, like, in house, then like you said, Richard, utilize those people. I mean, I I know enough about email to be able to type to a dev and say the email is not working. So Yeah. Use your email people to to make sure you've got good email. List building is can be VA work. Just give, like, sort of clear instructions, and, yeah, copy and the actual stories. There is a bit of a skill to that, a bit of creativity, and data campaigns work really well as well.

Christopher Panteli [00:28:30]:
And, again, there's there's a bit of a sort of data skill to that, but you you will have people on your team that will lend themselves to to these individual elements of of a successful PR campaign.

Richard Hill [00:28:39]:
I think that's brilliant. I would say, to the guys, maybe hit pause and just step back through Chris' list there because I think, you know, it's, an area where as a founder and experienced you know, if you're experienced in that product, I a, you won the Tour de France, you sell by, because that's quite an extreme extreme, that would be great. Yeah. But if you're a, you know, if you sell barbecues and you won the, you know, the barbecue championships in the US, that's pretty cool as well. Yes. Because that that is a thing, apparently. But I think, a lot of people sell things that may a lot of e comm stores are maybe selling things that aren't that, should we say, sexy. And that, you know, when we talk about the different types of PR, we talked about inbound, outbound, and then we touched on, you know, data led and, again, you know, responsive, you know, reactive.

Richard Hill [00:29:27]:
But product specifically, product PR specifically, maybe the industries, you know, I think of some of the things we sell. You know, we sell there's nothing we don't sell. I don't think I can I don't think anybody could test me really and say, that's something that we don't sell? There's I'm sure there is things we don't sell, but we sell most things. And some things, you know, are pretty boring.

Christopher Panteli [00:29:48]:
Go on. Give me an example. I wanna hear what

Richard Hill [00:29:50]:
you're doing. Boring. I'm trying to make it as hard as possible because I I had a couple, and I thought I know where you'll go with that one. So let just give me a second. I'm gonna go with, oh, yeah. I see. I've made a rub man back here because all of a sudden, I I I'm thinking, yeah, that's an easy one. That's an easy one.

Richard Hill [00:30:06]:
So we sell

Christopher Panteli [00:30:12]:
radiators. That's really PR friendly.

Richard Hill [00:30:16]:
Yeah. Okay.

Christopher Panteli [00:30:17]:
So is a radiator radiator ecom store, does it look radiator y from the from the homepage?

Richard Hill [00:30:23]:
Yes. Yeah. You go to the homepage and all they sell is radiators. We've actually got 3 clients that sell radiators. 4, I think. Different some of various sorry. Go on.

Christopher Panteli [00:30:33]:
Anything in that home that home space, Yeah. Is is especially UK media, they love that stuff. And if you can time time as well, so seasonality as we're approaching the winter now, freezing pipes, this sort of thing, top five tips to make sure your pipes don't freeze this this winter. Yeah. You'd want, you know, a a an engineer. Like I said, you wanna find that expert, you know Yeah. A boiler man, a gas man. I I don't know what a radiator expert is specifically, but anything that fits broadly within that, and this stuff gets lapped up by the UK media.

Christopher Panteli [00:31:06]:
If you come up with an interesting story that that is timed well, then that is a, yeah, a sec if I get, approached by a radiator client, I'm I'm excited. Yeah. Go. Let's take this off.

Richard Hill [00:31:20]:
So we have a client that sells safes.

Christopher Panteli [00:31:27]:
Okay. Safes. So that is trickier. That is a little trickier. So I'm thinking the finance route, or I'd be thinking home security, which does do Yeah. Very well. But again, you need to position that expert. But home security as we're approaching Christmas, I'm I'm sure we do really well with like a home security, sort of story.

Christopher Panteli [00:31:55]:
But if you see that the key is is to broaden that that, broaden that topicality and that and that that, how how closely relative it is. Yeah. It is newsworthy. I mean, you can see you're a UK guy. You see the the Mirror, The Express, The Sun. You know, you see these stories. You'd see expert reveals, you know, how where to best places to hide Christmas presents. Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:32:19]:
Yeah. Burgled this Christmas. So the the key then comes down to the quality of that story. It comes down to how you're positioning it. So the owner of the safe ecom store, are we are we doing it from the owner? Does he does he have any sort of home security expertise, or does he have someone on his team that's like a home security expert or a safe expert and we can position them accurately and, and make them appear to be the expert that they are, and then the journalist will will trust and see that credibility. And we've we can I can already think now of 5, 10 more ideas that would you'd do really well for that? Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:32:56]:
Yeah. I get it. And I think that's a really good point, you know. So that thing you sell, what what can you align that with? Obviously, radiators, you're wearing with the weather change now. We're sitting here. When this episode goes live in the UK, the weather's gonna be pretty poor. You know? There's that turn saving money. You know, obviously, what can you do to you know, you're gonna have your radiators on more, but what can you do to maintain them, look after them to save you money? And, obviously, cost of living is an issue at the moment or it's a big topic.

Richard Hill [00:33:23]:
Safe, security, but also, you know, hiding things, securing things, Christmas is coming in tight in with Santa Claus somehow. Maybe maybe, you know, you could have a comedy angle. But something you touched on, about 10 minutes ago was, like, data led campaigns. Now what what, I I always think, like, sources of data. Is there any sort of, fairly unknown to our listeners that what you think might be fairly unknown sources of data But, you know, I think we you you you could share with our listeners to obviously use data within campaigns to then make comparisons and and you know? So we did going back to the the safe swan, you know, we did a security piece, and sort of got data around the most burgled towns in the UK and and then did an infographic to do with That's right. To do with that. And then we made it more localized so we could get in in local paper the local local online media. We founded a company that are that had about 20 different, online publications, but they're all regionalized.

Richard Hill [00:34:26]:
So we took this national campaign and made it local, and then got on quite a lot of local, sites. But in terms of sources of information, data, any any specifics that you would could share?

Christopher Panteli [00:34:39]:
Yeah. That's great. What what you just said there now, that that's where my my mind would have gone for for something like that. So, yeah, I'd say there's a number of great places, that you we can get data from so many places now. And the important thing now with AI is we are able to process and ask questions and understand that data in a really, really, really interesting fast quick intuitive way. So it's not just about, oh, I've got all this data. That's great. We need to find a newsworthy story.

Christopher Panteli [00:35:08]:
So with you and the campaign that you ran with the with the, where the most burg burglaries were, that would have been of interest to those regional areas that had the highest or the lowest amounts of burglary, and therefore, it becomes a newsworthy and interesting piece. But yeah. An excellent source of data, the first place that you should look is any internal data that you've got. So if you've got, like, regional sales figures, returns figures, if you're in if you sell sex toys and you have, like, a certain part of the country buying more sex toys than any other part of

Richard Hill [00:35:41]:
Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:35:42]:
Yeah. You've already you know, you that's the look in your own backyard first because you could have you could be sitting on a new story just within your own internal data. Yeah. Yeah. Other places, you can do things like freedom in in freedom of information requests from, like, the UK government, US versions as well, where you can ask for data specifically around something you think may be of interest. So where have been the most burglaries in the last, you know, 12 months within a particular region or within a country, or, you know, have there been any crimes, sex toy reported crimes across the UK, let's say?

Richard Hill [00:36:18]:
You're a propaganda for it now, aren't

Christopher Panteli [00:36:20]:
you? So yeah.

Richard Hill [00:36:22]:
Man man 40 years old gets hammered sorry. I should know. Spattered. I mean, he's probably the better. He gets battered with something.

Christopher Panteli [00:36:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. And then again, you can you can look for data using, using places like social media, Instagram, hashtags, can scrape sites. Places like Zillow, these big powerhouse, like real estate sites. We can scrape house prices changes. Yep. And and again, we can we can or we can just the the more innovative that we can be and the and the more original ad data there was a great campaign somebody ran within recently, which was to do with the, I think it was either the bluest the bluest oceans or the the the most yellow, beaches, the the the whitest beaches. And they just took a bunch of, like, publicly available photos, but then they they calculated, like, the hex color of the actual, image.

Christopher Panteli [00:37:21]:
And then they did a a a graph, and then they were able to plot which was the bluest ocean. Yeah. Genius. Yeah. Super simple, but it's original data, and

Richard Hill [00:37:28]:
the journalists gonna lap it up. I've seen that. That's great, and that that is a really good idea. So that comes down to having sort of a creative people, obviously, having a team like like yourself on board to have sort of access to different things and just, like, having I think getting, like, in the stores that are listing, just making it part of the process of coming up with ideas, which is very much what we do. You know, if we have a new client here, you know, we'll get we put a meeting request in for the bulk of the team, and maybe 8 or 9 people might turn up for, like, a 15 minute brainstorm. But I've already dropped you about a 25 minute brainstorm just like we're doing now or you're doing. It's just you come up with different ideas, and then they how can we connect that to or how where can we get the data source for that? Or, you know, and then next thing, you know, you've got your potentially a really good idea. It can be quite difficult on your own, isn't it? Hence, what people hire companies like yourselves.

Christopher Panteli [00:38:19]:
Yeah. The team ideation sessions are

Richard Hill [00:38:21]:
Yep.

Christopher Panteli [00:38:22]:
A a brilliant thing to do. You can do something called forced connection, something we do. So you just get AI to generate, let's say, 10, 20, 30 random words, and then take that random word and try and find a connection to your brand and your company, and you'll quickly start coming up with crazy ideas, really interesting things. And then within that, there may be, like, you know, a real golden nugget, something where you go, hang on. This is this would be really interesting. All all we need to do is find the data, but, you know, we could find out how many x's are doing whatever and really good and it gets the team juices, the creativity flow. You may not have a single, like, that's the creative person in the team, but collectively as a group bouncing off ideas. And it's fun as well, you know, if you if you do have the sex toy ecom shop, then it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Christopher Panteli [00:39:09]:
And the radiator guys as well. It will be fun for them as well.

Richard Hill [00:39:12]:
I promise. Adam Beaufon. We've Adam Beaufon. We've Adam Beaufon. We've had we had a sex toy shop on podcast about 6 episodes ago. That well, it was in person as well, and they brought quite a lot of products with them. So that was fun, embarrassing, all the Richard. Fuck.

Richard Hill [00:39:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. I had to turn down the redness on the camera on that, Faye. It was a that lady that came in as well, so I was I was yeah. It was quite a fun fun afternoon, to be fair. They brought all sorts of goodies in, and it's funny, actually. They left. So all the samples, if you like, they brought in, probably about 10 samples.

Richard Hill [00:39:43]:
I won't probably go into the details of all the samples, but Yeah. And then I left them on the counter in the in one of the offices here. I said to the guys, oh, such and such came in yesterday. I left all these. Help me self. I came in the next day. They're all gone.

Christopher Panteli [00:39:55]:
They're all gone. Bloody hell. Fuck.

Richard Hill [00:39:57]:
Yeah. They're all gullions. Like, I can only imagine it to be quite amusing to be a fly on the wall as some of the teams, you know, when they went home at night going, oh, difficult day at work. Yeah. I got this dildo. Yeah. That literally would have happened. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:40:11]:
So brilliant. But yeah. No. Brilliant. So okay. So, ultimately, you know, we covered quite a lot of ground there. And I think, you know, some great insights there, Chris, from from, you know, sort of, like, in in the trenches. A couple more points.

Richard Hill [00:40:26]:
I mean, influencer marketing, you know, we're doing more and more slight tangent, but more and more with TikTok shop, for example, and working with influencers from a TikTok perspective and from a slightly different angle. But in terms of influencers and digital PR, you know, what role do you see influencers playing more and more sort of in terms of getting coverage for clients?

Christopher Panteli [00:40:46]:
Yeah. I mean, more so now than ever. If you if you can begin to make those, like, brand partnerships, influencers don't forget they're already in that newsworthy position. The the difficulty with with with the influencers and then leveraging that influence for your own digital PR efforts. First of all, it's gonna be like what it is you wanna achieve. So if it's a pure link building play, or if you're looking for, like, wider coverage, because as SEOs and, link builders, we've sort of hijacked what one might call, like, traditional PR, which is obviously just to, you know, get your brand and your name out there, which could be in print, news, you know, any form of traditional media. But as SEOs and link builders, we we leverage digital PR in order to get coverage. But really what we want is is the link on BBC or Forbes or New York Times.

Christopher Panteli [00:41:40]:
Yeah. That's what's gonna drive the the SEO efforts for in Google. But in like I said at the beginning of the of the podcast, it's now it's about brand messaging, brand visibility everywhere. Everywhere we can be because people aren't just going to Google now. They're going to search gpt. They're searching in TikTok. So the more that we can have a clear visibility in that in that ethos of connected media, the better is gonna be for our brand and our business. Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:42:12]:
But, yeah, we can definitely leverage influencers. It's a great way to do it. When I was talking at the beginning, we said, maybe you've got an ecom shop that sells fitness equipment. If you've got nobody in the team that's sort of any clear fitness expert, then part try and partner with, you know, a fitness instructor influencer, and then you can come up with some clever ideas, some clever stories with them, and you can have much higher, success rate on digital PR because this guy's already a newsworthy influencer. So, yeah, just makes sense.

Richard Hill [00:42:43]:
Yeah. They've already got the audience. Yep. Yep. Great stuff. So tracking success with digital PR, you know, I think, you know, our our agency, you know, we like to think we're obsessed with from, you know, results, and I think every agency out there sort of say that, you know, but ultimately trying to track back as much as possible to revenue, you know, which which, you know, we could do a whole episode on this this piece. But digital PR, sort of tracking the metrics that matter. You know, you mentioned, obviously, links and link and getting that link.

Richard Hill [00:43:13]:
So in terms of I think it's pretty obvious that it's very important from an SEO perspective to get the link. But maybe sometimes and quite often you don't get the link, you know, from publications. How do you have you got, like, a little trick not a trick, but, like, do you obviously go back to them and say, hey. Where's my link, dude? Pretty much.

Christopher Panteli [00:43:31]:
Well, I mean, funny you should say. Yeah. I mean, I would say 40% plus of the the billable links that we, display to a to a client once a campaign is completed. At least 40% of them have come post publication of the article. So namely, it was an unlinked mention, and then our systems and processes led to us being able to get that link active.

Richard Hill [00:43:54]:
Going back to them with your ideas and processes, whether that's automated or via somebody going, hey. Thanks for that piece. Loved it. Love what you did there. However, could you please, do you mind just giving me a little link? Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:44:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and no. We that's not automated at all. I don't I wouldn't recommend that. Yep.

Christopher Panteli [00:44:12]:
Personally, I know people do do that, but for us, it's like, you you are so close to the finish line with an unlinked mention. Like Yeah. Put the effort into, you know, and there's many the first and foremost, you need to be tracking those unlinked mentions. And larger brands and larger ecom stores, especially like product focused, ecom stores as well. You wanna be tracking products and brand, vigorously because

Richard Hill [00:44:38]:
Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:44:38]:
Even if you're not gonna get a link added to a piece of PR that you are actively involved in, If you have a newsworthy product that people are talking about on the Internet, you wanna be tracking that. And if somebody mentions your business, your brand, or your product, and they haven't linked, you should be going and saying, hey. You know, in the nicest possible way, please add a a link. Yeah. And that's gonna compound. The the effect of that will compound. So we do that for our clients anyway. We track, you know, everything.

Christopher Panteli [00:45:07]:
And then with the unlinked mentions, 1st and foremost, you wanna be seeing if you've got an existing communication thread with that journalist. So let's say you've been talking to that journalist for, you know, a week then double checking facts figures and whatnot. And they've included you in their Forbes article, but they didn't link. That's obviously first port of call is go back to the journalist and say, hey, I thought, you know, why didn't you link to me? You wanna try and actually get that link request in writing as early as possible, but without Yeah. Really formally asking for a link. It's quite tricky to do. But they're much more likely to give you a link after the fact if it's been discussed in writing within an existing email thread. And that's just because they they get really nervous around their editors and whatnot if if they feel like they've not delivered on on something that was promised.

Christopher Panteli [00:45:54]:
But you wanna just sort of say, in a nice way, like, you know, in in order to to attribute me for this, you know, please could you link here? And then if they don't respond to that, then by way of admission, it's almost like, you know, they they should then add that in. Yeah. Outside of that, then you wanna go to, editors of the publication. You can go to sister publication editors. You can make threats. You can say you didn't link to me, remove my quotes. And Yeah. 90% of the time they'll come back and they'll say, yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:46:26]:
Okay. We'll move your quotes. So we've stopped doing that one. It doesn't work. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:46:30]:
You let you learn the lesson about one.

Christopher Panteli [00:46:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you can, you can also you could just be, you know, really nice and just say, yeah, I'd really like you to add this link because I put a lot of time and effort into this. Get really humanistic about it.

Richard Hill [00:46:46]:
Yeah. That's right.

Christopher Panteli [00:46:47]:
Yeah. Speak to the the human nature of it. But sometimes it'll just be completely out of the control. Maybe a complete no link policy from a Yeah. Publication point level.

Richard Hill [00:46:57]:
Just a numbers game, isn't it? It's frustrating when you, obviously, you land a cracking publication and there is no link. You go back and they go, oh, sorry. You know, our our policy is no links, and you're like, ah. But It's

Christopher Panteli [00:47:07]:
still got that. Yeah. It's still a piece of coverage. It's still a and what I would do in that in that situation, if they've given if they've quoted the the expert or they've quoted the, you know, the person that was, behind that press release, behind that story, but they've they've omitted a mention of your brand, and they're they're they're refusing to add a link, as policy, then get them to add that brand name in there because Google Yeah. And the LLMs, especially if it's a big publication

Richard Hill [00:47:38]:
Yeah.

Christopher Panteli [00:47:38]:
They will see that. You know, if it's the BBC, if it's Forbes, if it's New York Times, you want your Ecom name shop, your brand name in that copy even if there's no link. That is still very, very valuable.

Richard Hill [00:47:49]:
Yeah. Great point. I think just as you as you said, sort of mixing those two things together, you might not necessarily be working on a campaign right now, but just been aware of any brand mentions that are out there of your brand. 1, obviously, making sure well, there's 2 things here. But if there's brand mentions out there, just going back and requesting links from those as well. But, obviously, like you say, if they won't do links for to your product placements or whatever it may be, then just add in the brand in there for the wider sort of LLMs. And, yeah, some great stuff there, Chris. So last couple of questions before we run out of time.

Richard Hill [00:48:23]:
Okay. I think, you know, my mind's buzzing with ideas, and and I'm sure our listeners are thinking, right, you know, well, yeah, we could do that. We know this guy and and and John in the counts is really good with this and, you know, and we could do the data thing and this and, you know, obviously, there's but there is obviously there's a lot to it as as we both know. But I think it firstly, I think it'd be good for you to step through maybe, you know, a a a campaign that you've been working on in the last maybe 12 months and some of the results that you've seen that might be might be quite relatable to our listeners around how you did a campaign, for like ecommerce?

Christopher Panteli [00:48:56]:
Yeah. So we worked with, fitness apparel, ecomm store, in the sort of martial art sort of clothing and, the related, equipment sort of, ecom shop. Yeah. They did a package with us December last year, so tail end of of last year. And as part of our onboarding with them, we were able to, get a fitness instructor, you know, positioned on that site, in order for us to run, a lot of inbound. So we would answer the inbound request from from journalists. Then we did some outbound stuff as well where we came up with some interesting, like, fitness related martial arts sort of stories. And this worked really, really well.

Christopher Panteli [00:49:43]:
So we we it was a 20 link campaign. So we got obviously more coverage than that, but the 20 billable links on some huge websites, GQ Magazine, the The Sun, Inews, Tom's Guide, Express, GB News, Metro, Daily Record, Best Life, some huge publications. And like I always say and as I'm sure you you say to clients as well, that coupled with their other, SEO efforts, so obviously, they also continue to produce good good content. But that coupled with, you know, this hugely successful PR campaign that we did resulted in I think they went from about 8,000 organic, sessions per month in Google. And then, today, so this is coming up to to 12 months later, it's a 225% increase. So there are 26,000 organic sessions now. And their graph is is just all the way up, which in this environment, if you will put, traffic graphs on Ahrefs or SEMrush from, you know, many, many different websites, it's it's not all, it's not all roses. But, yeah, these these sorts of blinks, they align you with the the sites that not only Google, but the LLMs trust.

Christopher Panteli [00:50:55]:
So Yeah. We trust those huge authority tier one publications. And if they are linking to you, then obviously, we know Google's algorithm works via links. We we don't fully understand the LLM models yet, but it it it's largely thought that that links are at least recognizable coverage or mentions on places that they can trust because these have to these models have to output information that they trust. So they have to get that information from places that they trust. It just logically makes sense that if your brand is being featured in multiple trusted publications, then it's gonna have a benefit in the LLMs as well. So, yeah, it was hugely successful campaign and, but, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Richard Hill [00:51:38]:
Love it. I love it. So using digital PR to ultimately build high authority of links to internal pages of an ecom store as literally what it's about, isn't it? You know, if you're from a from a digital PR link building process point of view, getting those links, you know, where where as you said, it contributed, Matt. You know, you've obviously the the site, no doubt, doing various other other things. But quite often, this is the part, you know, the link building digital PR piece that gets missed. So I'd like to finish every episode, Chris, with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our listeners?

Christopher Panteli [00:52:14]:
Yeah. Well, I haven't I hadn't read a physical book for years, like, a long, long time. So I do audio books and podcasts ferociously, but I did, the 75 hard recently.

Richard Hill [00:52:31]:
Oh, did you? Yeah. Of course.

Christopher Panteli [00:52:33]:
Yeah. I saw, Joe from Fact Joe's agency had posted that he'd done it on Twitter, and I thought, I'm I'm already getting up at 5 AM anyway because my wife has work at 6. I was already going to the gym at 6 AM till 7. I thought, may as well do the 75 hard. It's just an extra 45 minute workout, do a diet, bring those of water, and read 10 yeah. And read 10 pages of a physical book. So I did it. I write I read 2 books, but the one I recommend is, is by a guy called Felix Dennis.

Christopher Panteli [00:53:00]:
It's called How to Get Rich. Sounds like a scam book. It's not. It's fantastic. This guy owned a big, print media publishing business in the UK. He made a lot of money and it it's a really, really interesting story. And I'm currently reading for the nerds out there. This is brilliant.

Christopher Panteli [00:53:17]:
It's like bite size, pocket size, astrophysics for people in a hurry like Neil deGrasse Tyson. So but that's, short and sweet, but if you're into, like, dark matter and all that stuff, then it's really good.

Richard Hill [00:53:29]:
So did you do the 75 hard first time then? Did they I did it all the way through. That I did it.

Christopher Panteli [00:53:34]:
Yeah. Impressive, Chris. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:53:37]:
Well done, Chris. That is impressive. Yeah. I have to admit, I downloaded that about 3 years ago. Got to day 6.

Christopher Panteli [00:53:46]:
Yeah. No. It's good. I didn't I didn't I didn't look like a a sports athlete. I'm still, you know, need to. It it was it was psychologically, it was good. It didn't result in the Adonis physique. I thought him up.

Richard Hill [00:54:00]:
That's impressive. That's it. That is very impressive. So, basically, 2 workouts a day, isn't it? One workout and 1, one, what's the what's the difference between the 2 workouts?

Christopher Panteli [00:54:08]:
2245. Yes. I was doing my my gym workout in the the morning, early, 6 AM. And then I do my second as like an afternoon walk, fast walk. Wait. That was the hard one because I just can't couldn't be bothered. But I I did do it. I thought, you know, I've done 5 days, I've done 10 days, I've done 20 days just keep, you know, may as well get to that.

Richard Hill [00:54:27]:
That is impressive.

Christopher Panteli [00:54:28]:
No. Oh, no alcohol as well. 75 days.

Richard Hill [00:54:31]:
Yeah. Very impressive. Very, very impressive, isn't it? So, Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. For those that wanna find out more about you, more about your agency, Linkify, what's the best way to do that?

Christopher Panteli [00:54:41]:
LinkedIn, Chris Pantelli, you know, chris@linkify.io, or, Twitter, linkify underscore, I think.

Richard Hill [00:54:51]:
Yep. Yeah. Brilliant. Well, we'll hook that up in the show notes, but thanks for coming on the show, and I'll see you soon.

Christopher Panteli [00:54:56]:
Yeah. I'll see you, in a week's time. Cheers, Richard. You will.

Richard Hill [00:54:59]:
Yep. Cheers. Bye. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast so you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.