Over the years, the Public Relations team at Catalyst has enjoyed successfully generating interviews, feature stories and press coverage of varying sizes and significance for our clients – some of which target the local/regional media and others who are focused on trade publicity.
But what do you do when you feel like media opportunities seem to be drying up? How do you provide clients with value when publications are getting thinner and editorial coverage is becoming both more limited and specific than ever before?
Times like these drive us to think creatively and be more flexible. Here are two best practices that we follow to ensure we continue to achieve good coverage in publications on behalf of our clients:
Go to the People
If publications (and reporters) are online, you need to target them there. You should know the social media handles of all of your clients’ key reporters and make connections with them, sharing their content and content they might be interested in, whether it is directly related to your clients or not. Having these types of conversations socially are an important part of developing media relationships in today’s ever-changing PR world. When they do write about your client, share the story and don’t forget to give the reporter a shout out.
Find your Purpose
Though traditionally the value of PR has been directly linked to how much media coverage you generate, perhaps you need to rethink and expand on its purpose. Perhaps value is more about generating content that you can then use in multiple ways – to pitch a story, write a blog, post on social media, insert in an e-blast, include on the client’s website, use in a sales presentation and so on. While it’s not a one-size-fits-all world, it’s nice to have content that you can repurpose – and that should be viewed as value-added from a client perspective.
Cappuccinos & Copy-writing
Ultimately, a good PR person excels at mining information, crafting compelling messages and determining the best ways to get that story and those messages across to the clients’ audiences. At Catalyst, we know there’s still plenty of opportunity to generate media coverage, even if you must be smarter and more creative to get it. In this new age of PR, we need to blend the skills of strategist, storyteller and salesperson; being strong at all three is a real win for our clients, as well as our firm.
-Melissa-