A client recently asked how to leverage their public relations (PR) wins beyond that one time appearance. An excellent question and something we talk about as giving our work “legs”.
The goal of your PR effort is to help showcase your company or spokesperson as a thought leader and expert. By virtue of being published in a magazine or newspaper – whether print or online – the reader most automatically assumes that your thoughts have credibility and merit. After all, you and your ideas have been vetted by a reporter or editor with a publication that the reader trusts.
So beyond that initial coverage, how may you gain greater visibility with your target audiences? Here are seven simple tips that we advise clients to consider:
Website: Post the article title, publication name, date and link on your website in a “news and media” section. (Make sure to have the article itself open in a new, smaller window versus taking the visitor away from your website.) Here is a sample format to consider:
Social Media: Mention and link to the article on your social media accounts. Ideally, the closer to the publication date, the better. Similarly, your execs and staff can retweet/repost via their own social accounts. It’s easiest to use the official company post as the start to promote the brand and control the initial message.
ENewsletters: Feature the article name, publication and links – similar to the website format – in your enewsletters for clients and prospects. Some clients have a short sidebar with “Recent News” or feature just one article at the end of a marketing email.
Blog: Consider expanding the concepts of an article in a blog post with a link to the article as the lead. This allows you to add fodder and include any key message points that the reporter didn’t pick up or links to source material.
Sales Team: Share significant articles with your sales team to support prospect follow-ups. Send a short note and the article link to a prospect and mention something appropriate for your situation such as, “I thought you might find these insights from Jay that just came out in Bloomberg of interest. I recall that you are considering expanding in Dallas.” You are sharing information that is timely and relevant as well as showcasing credibility.
Entire Staff: Celebrate the big articles with your staff for teambuilding and culture, so the internal team can see the bigger picture that their work helps support. Some clients do this on a monthly basis and some for just really big wins.
Other Publications & Conferences: Separately, our PR team uses the articles to lend credibility as we pitch a client to other reporters/publications. This approach also works to support pitches for speaking engagements.
Always be mindful of copyright restrictions. The majority of articles are featured online with public access where you may easily provide a link to the original content on the publication’s website. In cases where the article is featured in a print-only publication or is in a stand-alone PDF file, you may need to connect with the reprints department to secure proper permission, most likely for a fee.
