By Erin Fox

So, following on from our recent post on our 8 essential PR tips for startups, we thought we should follow it up with some pointers on how to maximise your PR wins.

Getting a double-spread feature in a national newspaper, or being interviewed on radio at a peak time is brilliant for getting your story heard, but it shouldn’t be the end of your PR game.

Media coverage — and how you use it — helps your credibility and can create many opportunities. Having your business featured in a well-regarded publication or on a leading radio station can lead to many benefits for your company; from a rise in prestige and profile, to the more tangible benefits of increased ticket sales, traffic to your website, as well as new customers and interest from investors.

How you use that coverage is an important factor in determining your success. So, make the most of it, and follow our tips for how to maximise the power of media coverage.

Thank you goes a long way

You don’t need to say it with flowers but do make sure you thank the journalist who featured your story or published your interview. Journalists are always looking for good stories so making a connection with that journalist, and building a relationship, will help them be more open to featuring you and your business again.

Sing your own praises

You can always rely on your PR company to sing your praises, but unless you’ve got a social media manager, you need to do some promotion of your own. Post links to radio interviews and scan photos of any print coverage — or even better get a PDF of it — and share that on your company’s social media. But for God’s sake, don’t publish the whole article in a readable format. Nothing annoys a journalist more than seeing their copy being given away for free – just give people a teaser so they have to buy the paper if they want to read more.

Create a conversation

Did your story get featured in multiple publications? Get sharing those links on your social media channels and tag the journalist who wrote the story, and the publication where it was featured. Interact with people who engage with your posts and create a conversation around your story. You can also use Facebook and Instagram ads, Twitter cards, and LinkedIn promotions to target potential followers.

Document and save

As well as sharing coverage on social media, track any online coverage you get and save those links into a file. Staying on top of your business’s performance in the press, helps with story development in future. While it might be old fashioned, it’s worth keeping a hard copy of your media clippings too, and not just for the nostalgia. News may be read mostly online, but there’s still room for print in the digital world. Having your story featured in a publication with a high circulation and readership can bring a lot of ROI to your business.

Measure and improve

Once your story has been featured, use that coverage to measure your company’s performance.  If you have coverage for an upcoming event, record the performance of ticket sales after your story has been published.  If you’ve just launched a new service, track how many visits you get to your website, through your analytics tools, after you share the story on your social media channels. With analytics, you can see which channels you got the most traffic from and use that data to immerse media coverage into your content plan in future.

Talk to a member of our team today to discuss how we can help raise your organisation’s profile.