Four Tips For Acquiring Publicity
Let’s face it; almost everyone is after some form of publicity to promote their brand, products or services but with so many people going after the same media outlets as you, how can you stand out amongst the ‘noise’ and gain the attention of the media in your industry?
The very first thing you need to do, before jumping into these four tips is make sure you know everything you need to know about your audience, the media in your industry and the top journalists and editors who report on your industry. DO NOT start writing press releases and sending them out all over the place, before you find out more about the people you’re sending them to. How much do you hate receiving emails and phone calls that have nothing to do with you? Same thing goes for your audience and especially journalists. A sports journalist really doesn’t want to hear about the launch of your new book on love and relationships….unless of course you can find some creative way to combine sports and love…but that’s for another blog post.
Tip #1: Create your story
Once you know enough about the media outlet, their readers/viewers and the journalist or editor it’s important that you craft a story or pitch that you can share with the appropriate editor that is both relevant and timely. For example, if you wrote a book on weight loss, you need to put time into preparing a pitch around what makes your book relevant to that media’s audience and if you have some recent stats and facts on weight loss or the negative effects of being overweight, then you want to include that in your pitch as well. The idea is to create an emotional connection with the reader/viewer of your story.
Tip #2: Share your story
So this tip seems obvious but sometimes people can forget that there are an endless amount of places to ‘spread the news’. Aside from sharing it with your targeted media on one day, find different groups and forums where you can share your story and even other bloggers who might find your story interesting and share it on their blog and then setup a time every week to share your story in new groups and forums. You put a lot of time into your story so better milk it for what it’s worth and share it far, wide and frequently.
Tip #3: Get connected
There are so many people on networks like Facebook and Twitter who you can leverage to get your name out there and some of those people include the same journalists and reporters that you want to cover your story. Once you start following like-minded people, you can begin to build a relationship with them and the more you engage with them and even share some of their stories, is the more open they will be to sharing yours. Publicity doesn’t always have to come from the media. There are lots of growing brands like yours who might have thousands of followers or more and they should be leveraged to build some buzz for you; but remember relationships are a two-way street so always be mindful of how you can incorporate their messaging with yours.
Tip #4: Know your resources
There are two resources I recommend to improve your chances of getting publicity. One of them is http://www.helpareporterout.com where you receive queries from reporters who are currently working on stories that might relate to yours and they just need your quote or comment or maybe even your whole story to feature. Once you sign up, you receive 3 emails a day with a long list of queries that are divided by categories like health, education, technology, lifestyle, business and more.
Another resource I recommend is www.prweb.com. They have a large newswire network where you can distribute your press releases and newswires are a great place to be when you want to get publicity because a lot of reporters build stories based off of what’s running on the newswire.
Overall, the best thing you can do to get publicity is to have a plan to continuously get your story out to people and not just media. Every week you should have some different means of getting your story out whether it’s to the media, groups, social media, blogs, organizations, at events, etc. It’s really a practice of consistency and showing up in the right places at the right time.
About Sandra Gabriel
Sandra Gabriel is a Brand Stylist, PR Pro & Social Media Strategist on a mission to build the next generation of BIG brands. She’s been studying and practicing PR & Communications for 10 years and is the founder of Gabriel PR, a boutique agency created to transform once voiceless platforms into blossoming bellowing brands. Visit www.gabrielpr.ca to find out more.
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