When I was growing up, every morning my mother would turn on the old crackly radio on top of our fridge to listen to the news while we ate our Wheaties cereal. My father would read the morning newspaper at the table with a cup of coffee after we’d left for school. We did have a small black and white television set as well, but that was only watched for the evening news. Those were pretty much our only options for news, unless you count the mother telephone gossip chain, which was probably the speediest form of communication, albeit not necessarily reliable facts.
With the onset of the internet and then social media, our options for news (and company marketing and public relations) have multiplied and multiplied again. So why does it sometimes seem just as difficult to get media placements today as it did when there were so many fewer media outlets? The answer lies in the age-old knowledge that sometimes in order to gain media attention, you have to create your own opportunities.
There are so many opportunities for media placement out there today; it is almost a sin not to be scooping some of these up for your business. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
In this down-turned economy, there have been drastic cuts at a lot of the television stations. Many reporters now have very limited resources and are searching for ways to meet all of their deadlines. Purchase an HD camera and film short clips of your local clients on specific topics and deliver the completed stories to your local TV station. If you give them something complete and ready to go, you have a pretty good chance they will use it at some point. For example, if you own a home care agency, you could create a short film about elderly fall prevention tips and interview some of your clients on ways your agency made their homes safer.
Get involved in your community, whether that means sponsoring a noteworthy event (such as gift gathering for overseas military) or offering a free service in tandem with a special event. For example, if you are a healthcare provider, you could offer memory screenings to celebrate Alzheimer’s month.
Respond to opinion-editorial articles that are in your field. Intelligent, immediate responses to an article may get picked up and printed.
Court a reporter who writes on subjects in your field. Get to know him or her. Find out what the reporter is writing about next and see how you can fit your company into that picture or offer ideas for future articles that tie in with the reporter’s subjects.
Get a personal story from one of your customers and write an article around the story that emphasizes your company’s benefits. Newspapers traditionally love personal stories about local people with quotes and a picture.
Submit articles to free article listing websites. Try www.ArticlesBase.com or http://ezinearticles.com.
Research popular blogs that are relevant to your industry and contact them to see if they are interested in guest articles.
Media placements, whether through print, television, radio or internet, can make a huge long-lasting impact on your business’s marketing efforts. Although it can sometimes take some luck, skill and repeated effort, media placements will lend a sort of third party credibility to your business that straight advertising lacks. corecubed has been gaining local and national media coverage for our clients for over a decade. Check out some of our own media placements and then give us a call to see how our public relations and marketing experts can gain coverage for your business.