Host: Sean Barber – https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrbarber/ – He/Him

In this episode of Search With Sean, I’m joined by a panel of experienced digital PR experts to discuss what makes a successful digital PR campaign today, how AI is changing the industry and how smaller brands can generate meaningful coverage without enormous budgets.

Joining me for this discussion are:

James Roach – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesroachpr/

Thomas Chivers – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomchivers/

Pat Ahern – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pahern/

The panel discuss:

- The digital PR campaigns delivering the strongest results right now

- Why reactive PR and expert commentary have become so effective

- How brands can create genuinely useful and newsworthy campaigns

- Using AI without losing authentic expert insight

- How to stand out in increasingly crowded journalist inboxes

- The growing problem of fake AI-generated experts

- Whether paywalls reduce the value of digital PR coverage

- How smaller brands can achieve results with limited budgets

Topics covered include:

- Why traditional “best cities for…” campaigns are losing their impact

- Combining different datasets to create useful and original stories

- Preparing expert commentary before major news events

- Building commentary banks through recorded client conversations

- Using Claude, NotebookLM and transcription tools to organise expert knowledge

- Keeping creativity and first-hand experience at the centre of PR

- Testing subject lines, pitches and expert credentials- Creating “proof of life” packs to verify genuine experts

- AI detection, watermarks and the risk of false positives

- Measuring brand awareness and SEO value beyond direct traffic

- Using reactive PR, Google Trends and proprietary data on smaller budgets

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