PR is all-too often defined by the almighty press release. Without hard news, many companies make the mistake of going dark and waiting until their next big announcement, not wanting to “bother” busy reporters or reprioritizing efforts away from PR until there’s a reason to pay attention to it again.
A successful PR program needs constant attention and creative input; it cannot be driven by news announcements alone. PR’s value comes from maintaining a steady, consistent flow of activity and coverage, which requires creativity, tenacity, resourcefulness and, above all, proactivity. PR professionals need to think of press releases as just one tool in their arsenal to help build awareness and mindshare for our clients.
For our client Flowroute, which describes itself as a “software company that happens to be a carrier,” the team took a multi-faceted approach to ensure that Flowroute was being consistently being seen by the right journalists, analysts, and influencers. Below is a summary of the results we’ve been able to secure for Flowroute over the past four months, and suggestions for ways you can keep your clients top of mind, without relying too heavily on press releases.
Identify the influencers: Industry analysts can be an important ally in your communications efforts. They have the ability to influence potential customers, offer third-party support to add credibility to news stories, and raise awareness around new product categories. Stay up to date on breaking news impacting your client’s space and pay attention to which analysts are being quoted by reporters. These are the people those journalists turn to for perspective on trends and breaking news – they should be on your radar! To date, we’ve secured briefings for Flowroute with several analysts from Current Analysis, Forrester, IDC, Infonetics, Nemertes Research, and Ovum.
Be flexible in your “ask” to reporters: Typically, we pitch reporters in the attempt to secure initial interviews/briefings for our clients. The reporters, in turn, write stories based on those interviews and (hopefully!) include our client in the final story. But be mindful when reaching out that not all pitches have to result in a briefing. Reporters are busier than ever, often being tasked to write multiple stories a day under very tight deadlines. They simply don’t have time to speak with everyone. For Flowroute, we sent out a proactive pitch to a select group of journalists, and offered either a briefing with an executive, or a contributed article/byline. This approach resulted in our securing a byline for Flowroute co-founder and CPO Sean Hsieh in RCR Wireless’ Reality Check column (“Busting myths and misconceptions about SIP trunking security”).
Read. Read. Then read some more. Keeping the drumbeat going requires you to be aware of the other instruments being played – that means paying attention to what competitors, partners, analysts, and your client are saying on a daily basis. That means regularly checking Twitter and other social feeds as well as HARO queries that come in daily. This allows you to offer your client as a source when news breaks, or when a trend is just starting to gain momentum. For Flowroute, our team keeps a close eye on their blog for potential story ideas – in one case, we developed a proactive pitch based on a post that CMO Dan Nordale wrote about the a new model emerging in telecom that Flowroute is calling “Be Your Own Carrier.” It resulted in our securing an introductory briefing with SD Times, one of the major publications aimed at software developers. Leveraging existing content like blog posts, white papers, case studies, and other materials can help secure media interest and coverage without depending on hard news or press releases.
I hope that our success to date with Flowroute can offer some new ideas for keeping momentum going, even when there’s not a huge news pipeline. Press releases on their own don’t guarantee coverage or media interest, but rather it’s the cumulative mix of proactive and news-driven outreach that keeps the steady drumbeat going for our clients. Let us know if there are ways you’ve helped keep a client’s visibility up outside of press releases – we’d love to hear from you!