As part of your marketing and promotion strategy, you should consider attracting positive media attention. Articles, highlights, and interviews from news outlets provide your business with free marketing. So why not try to get the media’s attention and spread the news about your business?
Many entrepreneurs are shy about the media and are unfamiliar with how to attract media attention. To help you, we’ve assembled a few great tips on how you can get positive media attention and promote your business for free.
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Develop a Compelling Message
The secret to attracting positive media attention is to have a compelling message. Newspapers and other media receive hundreds and thousands of press releases every day. How do they choose the ones to feature? Only the ones with the most compelling message and might be the most interesting to their readers, listeners, or viewers will be the picked.
Your product is not interesting. How it affects others is. How you improve the environment with your manufacturing techniques is compelling. How you created 50 jobs with your new business is compelling. These are the types of messages you want to send when you are attracting positive media attention.
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Send Press Releases Often
With each compelling event that happens in your business, you should be sending a press release to announce it. Remember, your message still must remain compelling, but don’t hesitate to announce a change in staff, a new product, or a small business conference you attended.
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Press Kit
One of the most important things you need in your media strategy is a professionally assembled press kit. This is something that you can easily and promptly send to a media representative when they ask for more information about your business. Include a company brochure, leadership bios, recent press releases, a recent company newsletter, and anything that can provide positive media attention and stir creative story ideas for a journalist.
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Become an Expert and a Trusted Source
It’s nice to get media attention from a press release, but it’s even nicer when the media contacts you about a special topic because of your expertise. To become an expert, you must tout your expertise. Start a blog and write about business topics you know. Offer seminars about solving certain entrepreneur problems. Submit article ideas to newspapers and magazines.
In addition, learn what certain journalists have to say. Then pick the ones who might be interested in your opinion. For instance, you might find that a journalist with a weekly column in the business section of your local newspaper likes to cite local sources. Get in contact with him and offer ideas for a new column and let it be known that you are available for quotes or opinions.
Creating media buzz and attracting positive media attention is easy once you know the secrets. Develop a compelling message. Become an approachable expert. And never stop letting the press know that your business has something interesting and informative to announce. Before you know it, your business will be in the spotlight!
