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Not too long ago, emerging technology companies selling business-to-business could send a compelling press release over a newswire service and get response from journalists with a light pitch or sometimes no pitch at all. Journalists covering Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and other giant brands were also drawn to smaller tech companies, even startups, if their innovations were unique, improved the flow of business or made other technologies better. These same journalists established themselves with the same publications and helped influence decision-making. Some journalists have stayed in one place, but the vast majority come and go nowadays.
Fast forward: the changes in PR
The Internet has considerably widened the field of media outlets covering business and technology. It includes news aggregator websites and pay-for-play editorial to reach your audience, making it tougher to get your news covered by publications the traditional way—mentions, pickups, and interviews for articles.
Getting your news (or company) covered by publications is still valuable for raising awareness, just tougher to do and takes a lot of work, and a lot of money if you use a dedicated PR firm.
The role of press releases and newswire services has changed also—but it hasn’t died. The links in your releases no longer impact search rankings thanks to Google’s algorithm changes in 2013 and the majority of newswire “reads” are from audiences with no interest. Despite this, we have found that:
- Frequent news with keyword-minded headlines can help to rise above your competition and web clutter.
- One or two press releases a month can demonstrate that you are stable and advancing. Have you ever gone to website and the last news announcement was over 6 months ago? It starts to raise all kind of questions for prospects and journalists.
- Journalists still have newswire accounts to help organize their interests, but they can’t have them all, so they also rely on Google Alerts and web searches to identify news opportunities—often driven by pre-defined editorial calendars that their publications want to focus.
“Closed loop PR” supports SEO, directly reaches prospects
Don’t stop writing press releases and don’t stop building press relationships. We suggest that you take your press release content farther than just your website and newswire distributions to directly reach prospects. Here is a “Closed loop PR” approach to consider that supports Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and raises the buzz:
- Write a 300 to 400-word Blog article that is educational, include a link to your website for more detail and/or link to another of your Blog posts. Don’t link people away from your content. An image or graphic also helps to illustrate your points. It’s important to host your Blog on the same domain as your website (not a sub-domain) in order to fully reap SEO benefits, like domain reputation and page ranking. Hosting your Blog elsewhere—even a subdomain—waters down your search presence.
- Post to your Company LinkedIn for key staff to share with their connections. It takes all of 5 minutes for them. Buyer-related contacts and influencers are likely there. Be sure that your staff is connected with your Company LinkedIn account.
- Feed other “active” company social media platforms. Don’t start and stop with Twitter, Google+ and other platforms if you’re not actively managing them, lack followers, or they simply are not right for your audience. If the news is technical in nature, ask your R&D team to talk it up with their peers on platforms they are actively sharing information.
- Send an Email to your customer and prospect databases. Based on the news, the call-to-action may vary for customers and prospects, so sending separate emails may be required and easier to track.
- Outreach to your press list for compelling news only, such as new offerings, customer successes, mergers and acquisitions, or executive and board appointments. Don’t waste a pitch on corporate achievements (awards, office openings, etc.), events (speaking, trade shows, webinars, etc.), and resources (white papers, etc.). If an Industry Analyst covers your company in an objective manner, I would consider it compelling because it can help journalists better understand the offerings and give them a source to leverage and speak to.
Final note: PR is part process and part instinct. Leave room for some creativity and some time to develop content. I suggest developing an initial PR Topics Schedule that you can reprioritize each month to stay proactive.