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Your Press Release Is the Beginning of the Story, Not the End

by Robin Cangie on March 14th, 2012

Your press release is out the door. You’ve crafted a great story that provides real value to your audience, added lots of great multimedia content, promoted it across all your social media channels and sent it to the newswire, as well as key industry contacts with whom you have a relationship.

Now what?

If you think you can just sit back and let the press inquiries roll in, you’re probably in for a big disappointment. Your press release is just the beginning of the story you wish to tell in the market. Here are three things you can do to gain momentum after your press release has hit the wire:

  1. Follow up. A quick email follow-up to your press contacts a couple of days after your release can make all the difference. Be polite, not pushy. Most importantly, be helpful. Journalists are very busy, so you need to prove that your story is worth retelling. Understand their pains and the things they write about, and show them how your release fits into their regular beats (and if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t be pitching them anyway).
  2. Utilize multiple channels. In the days and weeks following the release, use other channels to tell your story from multiple angles. Some examples might include writing a blog post on a leading publication or your own company blog, speaking at an industry conference, or publishing a white paper. Don’t go about it haphazardly, though. Make sure that everything you publish is relevant to the original story you’re trying to tell.
  3. Enlist your biggest fans. You don’t have to do all the work. Enlist your biggest fans to help you tell your story, and reward them for doing so with public praise and recognition, or perhaps an exclusive perk or two. It isn’t as hard as it sounds – if you aren’t sure where your best fans are, your social media channels, account managers and even your customer support team can help you find out who’s engaged and passionate about your brand.

How do you follow up on your press releases? What successes have you had?

by Robin Cangie
on March 14th, 2012


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The PR News Wire Is Dead. Long Live the PR News Wire.

by Robin Cangie on January 31st, 2012

We recently came across this article about the death of the traditional press release news wire, which asks the following question of several PR experts:

As Google alerts, social networks and online communities grow in strength and accuracy when sourcing stories and building relationships – what becomes of the wires? Do they become less important? Do they cease to exist?

Given that we’re in the business of helping you create and distribute social media press releases (though we’re not a traditional wire service), we took a natural interest in this debate. The general consensus of the experts is, predictably, that the traditional news wire isn’t dead; it’s simply evolving.

We’d like to offer an additional take. While the news wire is still a useful component of your PR strategy, effective PR is and always has been about building strong relationships. Sending a generic press release to thousands of publications via the news wire might get you a temporary boost in traffic or even – if you’re lucky – a mention in a big publication. But in the long run, ten strong relationships with influencers in your industry are worth more than 10,000 media outlets who’ve never heard of you.

Press releases, the news wire, multimedia content and your social media newsroom are powerful tools for the PR professional, and as you begin building solid relationships with influencers, they’re great resources for your contacts. But they’re no substitute for genuine human interaction. This was true long before the social web rose to prominence.

Do you still use a traditional news wire? If so, why? If not, why not?

by Robin Cangie
on January 31st, 2012


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Three Tools to Find Your Influencers

by Robin Cangie on January 17th, 2012

Where are the influencers in your industry? You probably know where to look for the top-tier influencers, but don’t underestimate the power of niche influencers who may not be as broadly known.

Here are three tools to help you find the hidden influencers in your niche:

  1. Klout. Love it or hate it, Klout is a great starting point in any search for influencers. It’s free to use and easy to search by influencers according to selected topics. One thing to keep in mind: Klout only measures online influence. It won’t tell you anything about the valuable offline connections that your influencers may have, which is why you should treat it as a starting point, not the final point.
  2. Follower Wonk. Follower Wonk is a fun and geeky little application that helps you uncover hidden influencers in your own network and those of your Twitter followers. You can search on Twitter profile data, compare different users, analyze your followers’ followers and overlay your own social graph on top of it all. Give it a try, but we warn you, it can get addicting.
  3. Muck Rack. Muck Rack is a service that aggregates the tweets of journalists and organizes them according to beat, geography, and news source. We’ve written about them before, but the company has made updated their business model since then – most notably, you can no longer hunt for journalists by beat for free. With a bit more legwork, the free version of Muck Rack can still help you uncover potential influencers in your niche. The paid version is also affordable for most businesses and will save you a lot of time.

While you probably won’t read about them in Mashable anytime soon, these “hidden” influencers can still offer you valuable coverage, especially if they have a trusted following. It’s all about quality over quantity.

What tools do you use to find your influencers? Please share in the comments.

by Robin Cangie
on January 17th, 2012


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