Posted In: PR by
Emily Thompstone,
August 20, 2026
By Emily Thompstone, Junior PR Account Executive
Earlier this year, I made my way over to Digitaloft’s PR Summit at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where I spent the day learning how others in the industry are approaching the ever-changing PR landscape.
In a rare win, it wasn’t raining in Manchester, so the day was already off to a good start. It was great to see some familiar faces and bump into one of our clients in between the talks, before making the most of the huge lunch buffet and heading into the afternoon sessions with plenty to think about and a very full stomach.
As you’d probably expect, AI came up a lot across the day. But one of the things I found most interesting was how often the talks came back to three important questions. Who can journalists actually trust as an expert? What does a successful Digital PR campaign actually look like, and where do we really want brands to be talked about?
Whilst there was tonnes I could have picked out from the day (beyond the buffet), these are three of my key take homes as someone who’s still new to the PR industry.
As a lot of PRs will know, journalists are having to be increasingly cautious about who they can trust to give them real expertise. I learned that AI tools used by journalists detect more than 70 fake experts in their inbox a day, and as a result, its putting even more pressure on PR’s to create stories for their brands that are unique and worth listening to.
The ‘Faces of Fakery’ journalist panel in particular reinforced the power of people-led PR. Building out your expert’s profile on LinkedIn and author pages, consistently delivering credible expertise and being transparent about sources over time gives journalists something to trust. In turn, this helps build stronger relationships with them, so when the right story comes along, they already know they can rely on you and your experts, opening the door to more opportunities for your clients.
While PRs have traditionally put a lot of value on backlinks and domain authority, being mentioned in the right context and in the right places is becoming increasingly important, especially as LLMs are changing how people discover brands and get recommendations online. It’s not just about being seen but making sure our clients are showing up where their target audience is actually looking.
One statistic that surprised me was that over a third of top listicles come from low-authority domains. As someone fairly new to the PR game, it was a good reminder not to overlook opportunities based on traditional metrics alone. With LLMs pulling information from a much wider range of sources, there’s now another layer to consider when judging the value of coverage.
The idea of looking beyond traditional measures of success came up again during Director of Content at Ahrefs, Ryan Law’s talk on building effective brand mentions. This really reinforced the importance of looking beyond the immediate output of a campaign and thinking about the impact that our coverage actually has.
Links are, of course, an important part of digital PR – they can build authority, support organic rankings and drive relevant traffic for your brand, but it reminded me that securing a link alone doesn’t necessarily equal successful coverage.
PR’s impact can be difficult to measure directly, particularly when it comes to building brand awareness, credibility and visibility over time, which highlighted the importance of consistency. A single brand mention might not transform awareness overnight, but consistently showing up in the right places, in front of the right people can build trust over for your brand over time.
This made me think more about the value behind each link, in particular where the brand has been featured, who is seeing it, and whether it’s putting them in front of the right audience. A link is impactful, but the context around it is just as important!
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