The Colab Brief: 008 - From One-Hit Wonder to All-Time Greatest 🎵

In the last few issues, we’ve done a real deep dive into how to secure media coverage. Obviously, getting a hit is challenging. But where we see a lot of companies fall short is in leveraging their PR efforts after the initial piece is posted. 🙅 

In today’s edition, we’ll look into how to make the most of your media wins.

For those of you that are new, this is The Colab Brief - a weekly newsletter covering all things comms. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, reach out.

Read Time: 2 mins

Expecting a press hit to ✨ magically ✨ change the fate of your company is like expecting to win a marathon your first time running. 🏃 Has it happened? Yes. Is it likely to happen? Um, no.

What IS effective at creating noticeable change for the business is ongoing coverage, over an extended period of time, at a consistent cadence.

What makes an even bigger difference? Leveraging that coverage in other aspects of your business. 💥

Here are a few of our favorite ways to maximize your hits:

1. Share on social. 💬 I mean, obvious. For every press hit you get, you need to be sharing it via your company’s social media pages. Even better if you tag the outlet and the journalist. Writers need traction, too, and in a lot of cases, their ability to secure future articles is determined by the number of clicks their pieces generate. Using your platform to help them achieve more readership is great for relationship building. If your CEO or a spokesperson is featured favorably, have them share on their personal platforms, too. And if you really want to go the extra mile, draft some sample social copy for your staff to post on LinkedIn. More eyes equals more potential customers.
   

2. Arm your sales team. 💪 A great piece of coverage provides an excellent excuse to reach out to your prospects. And it doesn’t even have to be a glowing “our company is the best!” feature. What do your customers care most about? What are their biggest frustrations and concerns? What major pain points are you helping them manage? Identify those topics and then work to place thought leadership content for your executives addressing those exact issues. When the pieces publish, you can leverage them as educational content with the added boost of third-party validation.
   

3. Parlay one piece into MANY pieces. 🪅 Chances are, if one news outlet is interested in a piece of news or a unique angle, others will be as well. While we frown upon the ol’ trick of sharing past links with new writers, you can leverage prior interviews to identify new pitch topics, content ideas for your blog, and future bylined articles.

4. Flood company comms. 📧 Get the piece out in as many ways as you can. We’re talking press pages, websites, internal and external newsletters, VC comms, Slack channels, social media contests with your employees… You have inherent internal channels you should leverage when a nice piece hits, and it can also help bolster confidence in the company from your stakeholders.

When you’re investing time and money in a public relations program, it’s worth your effort to leverage each article to the best of your ability. Much like any program, PR is best utilized when implemented in conjunction with your larger sales strategy.

Like The Colab Brief?

• Learn more about Ashley and Lizzy

• Share with your friends

• SWAG [Coming Soon]