Spring Cleaning for Public Relations
With the spring season, comes a little spring cleaning. But we’re not talking about your stains and dust at home. It’s time to spruce up your public relations techniques.
Every day there are thousands of companies trying to get their brand in the news. The key to success in today’s fast-paced, PR industry is to stand out from competitors and be innovative. To do so, you must first take inventory of your current PR practices and collateral, and then, identify areas where you can improve. Here are a few ideas for how you can put a shine on your media-facing assets this spring:
- Be creative: Reporters and producers receive a multitude of pitches each day, so it’s important to be creative to stand out. You can do this in a number of ways, including reaching out via social media or including visuals or infographics with your press releases to grab the reader’s attention.
- Be a thought leader: It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging five times a day if your content isn’t useful. Get to know your audience and understand what they care about. Think about quality not quantity. Once you start taking the time to produce content that matters, gaining followers will be much easier.
- Don’t forget about existing customers: It’s easy to get caught up in trying to reach to new audiences, but don’t forget about those followers you already have! A great way to monitor customer satisfaction is through social media. Be sure to respond to those who interact with your brand on social media. Let them know you care whether they have positive or negative things to say. If they have negative comments, take them seriously and use this any criticism to make internal improvements.
- Expand media relations: You’re not limited to only reporters and producers anymore. Reach out to leading bloggers, product review sites or social media influencers for publicity and content marketing. You will be surprised at how much of an influence these new outlets have!
It’s time to weed out the old, and let new ideas and techniques blossom! Don’t be afraid of change. It’s an exciting time for the PR world!
-- Lauren Merlini
