By Marion Williams-Bennett
In our last blog post, How To Create A Successful PR Campaign For Your Business, we looked at some of the fundamentals of how and why a company would want to start a public relations program.
As we learned, PR can help you create awareness of your company and your services, PR is a great way to generate leads for your marketing pipeline and it all starts by defining who you are and why people should buy from you. When you’ve completed those first steps, your next step is to take your message out into the world!
In our next series of posts, we’ll take an in-depth look at the communications tools you can use to gain awareness of your company, communicate with your target audience, and increase interest in your products.
To start, we’ll look at how promote your organization with a press release.
Press Releases
Developing a press release – and getting it covered in publications from your target market – adds credibility to your message and delivers that credible message to your audience.
A press release should announce something newsworthy. Hiring new people, adding additional services, bringing on new clients, and purchasing new equipment are all announcements that are worthy of a press release. These types of announcements show how your business is growing, and there’s not much better news to share with your target market!
When writing the release, you want to answer the questions – who, what, where, when and why. The most important of these questions is the why. Why should someone care about this news?
For example, if you have acquired a new customer, your announcement can say:
Acme Print and Marketing Services is pleased to announce that The Big Bank has chosen Acme to handle all of their print production and direct marketing communications needs. The Big Bank is another example of Acme’s expanding role as a leader in providing print and marketing to organizations in the financial services industry.
The news is that The Big Bank has become a client; the story is that Acme is now becoming a go-to resource for the financial services industry.
Note that if you are announcing the purchase of new equipment or technology, the vendor you buy from is usually more than happy to write a press release about your purchase. These vendors are sometimes able to get coverage in publications and sites where you might not be able to, so be sure to ask!
Distributing the Press Release
Once you have finalized the press release, (and received approval from any customers or vendors that you mention) send your press release to publications and websites that cover your industry and reach the target audience you are trying to connect with. This may require a bit of research, but you want to be sure you are speaking to an audience who cares about your message.
In our Acme Service Provider example, it would be beneficial to reach out to publications that focus on marketing and communications for financial services.
In addition to sending the press release to publications and websites, you can also send it out via a distribution or wire service. These services will send your press release out thousands of publications, and can help boost your SEO rankings. PRWeb www.prweb.com is one such service, and they charge a fee. There are other services that will send your release for free, though the results may not be as effective.
Repurposing Your Content
Once your release is out, there are several ways to keep the news alive. First, be sure to post links to the press release from all your social media outlets – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. In addition to the link, post a bit of the story as well. Acme could tweet “More Good News from Acme” and a link to the press release.
In addition, you can take the content of the press release and rework it into a blog post. Note that these are different communications channels, so you want to be sure you edit the content so that it reads more like a blog post and is more conversational.
In our next post here at PrintMediaCentr, we’ll take a closer look at these tools and how to use social media as part of your PR effort.
Connect with Marion: Create Communications / EMAIL / LinkedIn / Twitter @mbbennett
6 Responses
As an integrated marketing professional, I would agree the PR is a tool to use. Today the use of one media or tool cannot be a valid program. Few prospects look to one media they based on a few studies look to 3 to 5 different media to evaluate a vendor. Media can include PR, trade associations; social media, Peer-2-Peer and others are just some of the media mix used.
Selection of your target vertical can also change the media mix, some verticals just don’t look to legacy media or what is considered to be emerging media, they look to events, white papers, presentations
Understanding your prospect and the vertical, which within they sit is a very important first step to understand the correct media mix to use.
PR Web is the best in the business. Our last release ended up on 141 sites thanks to Vocus.
A wonderful post, Deborah! I particularly love the idea of telling the news vs. telling a story – such a great way of looking at the information you want to share. Thanks!
Great comments, thank you all for your input!
@Thaddaus, yes absolutely! PR is only part of the media mix you can use. What matter is that you are telling the same story in all of the media you use. Obviously, you can tell it different ways, but you need to hit the same key points each time.
@Katherine – that’s helpful feedback on PR Web. I knew it was helpful in getting your release posted and having an impressive number like 141 sites is really helpful.
@Melissa,yes, keep looking at the story!!
PRWEB is about a useful as ezine, Pressat, prnewswire are the best these days.
@Thomas Sorry, but there’s no comparison between spammy article directories or free PR sites and Vocus. For example, I got 7 conversions last week from referral traffic through PR Web. My release also got picked up on a related edu domain. You don’t get those kind of results from a site like Ezine.