A good digital program has a strong public relations spine 

By Jessie Koerner, Manager, Novitas Communications

We were discussing in office what makes a great digital program the other day. The audience, the creative, the delivery—they’re all important to the structure of successful digital outreach. But I’d say the skeleton that those clothes hang on is the public relations effort parallel to the social posts, the ads, the emails. 

Hear me out.

Public relations is having a moment when it comes to generative engine optimization (GEO). Tools like Precis AI or Claude prioritize news sites and stories for a myriad of reasons: legitimacy, already cross-referenced, fact-checked, etc. This makes it all the more important to chase those earned media hits. 

In addition, people, our audience, prioritize those sources as well, even with the current scourge of trust in legacy media and cries of, “fake news!” Pew’s recent dive into Americans’ complicated relationship with the media found that even while we’re in our feelings about the news, 8 in 10 of us still find it’s imperative to be well informed as a civic responsibility when they vote. Going further, 78% said that the news helps them “at least a little” when they go to vote. 

Unfortunately, Americans’ attention spans are also at an all-time low, and 54% read at a sixth-grade level or below. “Stopping the scroll” in a digital program is a delicate balance of clickbait, simplicity, and compelling content that accomplishes a goal. It also needs to have legitimacy for people to then interact with the post, ad or email. Oftentimes, too, a digital manager is trying to cram as much information into the ad as possible. The antidote to all of this?

A good media game. 

For example, in a recent issue campaign we worked on, we were outspent 10 to 1. That’s a lot of eyes to play catch-up with our messaging. We utilized every opportunity we could to reach out to media with the complexities of the financial situation the election hinged upon. We left it to reporters to cover the nitty-gritty details of the campaign; it added legitimacy to our claims and gave us great content to share on socials and email, and link to in ads. 

With the complex piece of explaining why to vote our way taken care of, our digital content could focus on the main message: Vote our way on this issue. 

We used our website as the hub: all of our news stories, blogs, studies, arguments were laid out there. We used social, email, and ads to refer voters back to the campaign site for more information. Otherwise, we kept the ads short and sweet, targeted to the audience they were developed for, and asked for what we wanted. 

Content for this campaign was developed with the mandate of define, contrast, humanize, ask. When the countdown clock is on to an election day, it’s a rush to build a solid foundation on socials and email. That’s where we leaned on our earned media effort to highlight the issue, differentiate ourselves, and humanize the effect of the outcome of the election. Sharing news content regularly gave us legitimacy and that good foundation. Doing that left us room to spend more money asking. 

In this campaign, we had over one million impressions across a seven-week social and ad campaign in a small market with a low four-figure budget. On average, people saw our paid content two to three times. We sent over 176,000 emails to voters across six segments. Passionate volunteers sent over 100,000 texts.

In each of these communications, up front and center was our ask: Vote this way, on this ballot issue. 

It turned out that this special election had more votes than most special elections, with 33% of the voting public casting ballots.  

Our issue won with 54% of the vote. 

A strong digital program relies on the elements that make up a good communications strategy. Leaning on social alone, or digital ads alone, or email alone, won’t net the results anyone craves in an age when everyone wants to go viral. A good communications campaign is more than the sum of its parts. And starting with leveraging public relations and earned media is the bedrock of any public outreach strategy in 2026.