A 12-Step Approach to Getting Media Coverage

Table of Contents

• Why Your Business Needs Media Coverage
• 12 Tips For Better Media Coverage 
• Benefits of Media Coverage

What do you do when the media isn’t calling? Media coverage can be the difference between success and failure for a business owner. In today’s hyper-connected world, getting local and even national media coverage is crucial to your business. This can be an invaluable way to build your brand, grow your audience, and increase awareness of your product or service. 

But how do you get media coverage? And how can you use it to reach new customers who may not be on social media? You need to know how to approach the media and what to do once you’ve got their attention to get media coverage. With these 12 tips for getting better media coverage, you’ll be able to gain exposure both online and offline.

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Why Your Business Needs Media Coverage

Media exposure is a crucial element of marketing a business. It can help establish your brand, build credibility and increase sales, especially if you can get local media coverage. 

Many different media outlets can help you spread the word about your business, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and TV stations. You may also get free social media coverage by using sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote your business. 

12 Tips For Better Media Coverage 

Getting media coverage takes time and effort. Press releases and social media event coverage are great ways to increase your online presence and brand awareness. The following 12 tips will help you build relationships with customers and secure media coverage for your business.

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1. Build a dissemination list 

It’s hard to get great local or social media coverage if you have no one to contact in your area. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook, along with sites like Medium.com, will help you assemble a list of journalists and bloggers who may be interested in what you have to say. 

Set up a Google Alert on your business name so that journalists can easily reach out to you for comments or story ideas. 

You might also consider setting up a Google News alert on your company name so that you’ll know when any new stories are published about it. This is important because it allows you to respond quickly to any inaccuracies and make sure they are corrected before they spread too far.

2. Know your story’s who, what, when, where, and why

Who is your audience? What do they want to read about? When is it going to be published? Where will it be published? All of these questions help determine how you approach pitching a story. 

If it’s not interesting or relevant to readers, don’t pitch it. It’s that simple. The best pitches are newsworthy and have an element of timeliness. Remember, there’s no bad publicity – only publicity you didn’t ask for!

3. Be consistent in your efforts.

Focus on building relationships with journalists you like and make sure they know who you are and what you do. It’s impossible to get great coverage with a one-off, event-based campaign. You need to be consistent in your efforts over time. It is also essential to develop your voice through social media, as many journalists use it to find out more about brands they are interested in writing about.

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4. Don’t talk about yourself too much.

This may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many people forget to mention anything other than themselves when pitching to journalists. Instead of focusing solely on your organization and its mission, make sure you also include relevant statistics about your industry or recent local news stories that illustrate an ongoing problem or hot-button issue related to your cause. 

Additionally, offering advice on handling specific situations is a great way to offer real value and come across as an expert in your field.

5. Create simple visuals with easily digestible messages

You need to have clear and straightforward visuals when you’re pitching journalists. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a single visual should be able to capture thousands of tweets or shares on social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest. 

While it’s not always possible, strive to create clear and digestible visuals. The simpler your message, the easier it will be to convince people to share your story in their network.

6. Digitize your press releases

To get more local media coverage, you need to get organized. Sign up for accounts on newswire sites and register your business to have a press room ready when journalists want information about your company. Set up your profile on Twitter and Facebook, as well.

7. Stay on top of trends.

If you’re trying to get local media coverage, keep up with the topics trending in your area. Read a newspaper or news app every day—or at least make sure someone on your team is doing so—and note down anything that looks like it might be worth pursuing. Then, journalists will be more likely to approve when you have something interesting to pitch. 

8. Release a curated report.

Use your expert knowledge to curate a report of compelling and fresh statistics, facts, and opinions. This can be released on social media or through an online press release distribution service to capture local and national press. 

9. Enlist bloggers to review your product

Many bloggers are happy to review products in their space. You can get a great response by offering your product in return for a review. We recommend you find active bloggers on Twitter, comment on other blogs, and include links to their sites in every tweet.

10. Learn to use SEO keywords

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral part of any successful web or social media event. To get more people to see your event, you need to make sure they can find it when they look online. An excellent way to do that is by learning how to use SEO keywords and optimize your posts on the digital press releases.

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11. Use relevant hashtags on social media.

Make it easy for your audience to tag you. Add hashtags to your posts on social networks and be sure that your posts are engaging—your audience may not share and comment if they don’t have something interesting to say about what you’re sharing. Track your success using a social media event coverage report.

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12. Create a survey

Creating a survey allows you to quickly and easily find out which journalists, bloggers, and other community members are interested in covering your event. Once you know who you want to target, create a survey that will help you get them excited about what’s going on.

Benefits of Media Coverage

Getting your name and business in local media makes customers more likely to purchase from you; it also helps to establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

These factors can help boost your company’s credibility—which is extremely important when persuading potential clients. Additionally, authority signals from reputable online local news platforms are still one of the most potent ways to build backlinks. Here are ten benefits of getting media coverage. 

1. Get your business in front of new people: Media coverage will help you reach a new audience and get your name there. In addition to helping you grow, media coverage is also a great way to get customer feedback and see what they like about your business or how you can improve it.

2. Positive exposure leads to word-of-mouth marketing: It’s been said that 91% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over all other forms of advertising. Good media coverage gives you positive exposure that people are more likely to talk about. You’ll never know if someone loves your product or service until they try it. So start by building positive word-of-mouth!

3. Build credibility: Media coverage is a great way to show potential customers that you are a credible business and that your product or service is worth their time and money. This will help increase sales, but it will also help you gain new customers who were initially hesitant to try your product or service.

4. Showcase your business: If you want people to take you seriously, they must know what you do—and why they should care!

5. You’ll stay top-of-mind: Businesses live and die by their name recognition—so it’s essential to keep your brand on people’s minds as much as possible. Media coverage is a great way to remind your customers that you exist and offer something they might want.

6. Tell your story: Your business is unique—and you must let people know what makes it different from everyone else in your industry. 

If you have a great story to tell, make sure you get it there! You never know who might be interested in hearing about how you got started or why you do what you do. Media coverage can help spread your message and get more people interested in learning about your business.

7. You’ll get more customers: If you want to grow your business, you must reach new people with your product or service—and media coverage is a great way to do that! Media coverage will help you attract new customers who may not have heard of your business otherwise.

8. It helps you stand out from your competitors: If you want to get noticed, you must differentiate yourself from your competitors—and media coverage is a great way!

9. Build your company’s presence: When people think of your business, they should immediately associate it with a few keywords that describe what you do and why you do it.

10. Start a conversation: The key to social media is interaction, and starting a conversation with your audience—via interviews, tweets, posts, or other forms of social sharing—is a great way to drive engagement with your content and get more people interested in what you have to say. Media coverage can help start conversations by providing fodder for fans to talk about.

The Final Word

Great publicity begins with solid media coverage. Gather information like social media event photos, influencer lists, and media coverage reports to track your efforts and improve your next campaign.

In a digital world, it’s important to have a media strategy that reaches beyond traditional marketing channels and into new territory like video and social media events. Use these 12 tips to help you get started!

Key Takeaways

• Have a press release ready and send it out at least a week before your event or announcement.

• Do your research! Find out which reporters cover similar stories, then follow them on social media so you can learn about their interests and beat them to breaking news on relevant topics.

• Direct and personalize your message. Don’t just send a blanket press release to every reporter and publication that you can find.

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