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- Public RelationsToday I want to discuss what is “pay-to-play public relations?” To understand pay-to-play public relations (PR), we first need to understand what PR is in the first place. Public relations is a marketing discipline that uses communication strategies and communication channels to build relationships with a desired audience. This may include earning media coverage, communicating directly with an audience via social media or owned marketing channels, such as a blog, YouTube channel or email. It may also include exposure via speaking engagements, events, or awards. In contrast, advertising is when an organization pays to be featured in front of an audience. This may include being a sponsor at an event or purchasing ad space in a publication. So what is pay-to-play PR? The answer is advertising! If a media outlet requires a fee to cover your company or product, that is a form of advertising. Unlike earned media coverage, pay-to-play coverage does not generally follow traditional journalism standards and ethics. The lines between advertising and earned media are becoming more blurred as ad content tends to look more and more like traditional journalism. For instance, if you read a BrandVoice article in Forbes, you are reading a form of commercial content. You will notice a “paid program” label on BrandVoice content. If an influencer promotes your product organically without payment, that is public relations. If you are paying an influencer, that is advertising. Both public relations and advertising are valuable marketing tools. Public relations tends to create more credibility because the exposure is earned and not paid for. A huge benefit of gaining exposure in a media outlet is third-party credibility. When someone features your company or product without being paid, there is often more trust in the content than a paid placement where the message is controlled and influenced by the company paying for exposure. However, advertising is still a critical marketing channel for creating a controlled message with repeated exposure in front of a defined target audience. The benefit to advertising is that you control the message and the frequency of the exposure. So both public relations and advertising are valuable, but it is important to understand if you are engaging in PR or advertising. Paid placements do not carry the same weight and credibility as earned placements, but earned placements are often more difficult to obtain and the frequency can be more sporadic. A well-rounded marketing strategy will include both a public relations and advertising strategy.Like
- Public RelationsI am often asked to write news releases for new clients. When gathering the information for the news release, I will ask the client for their company’s boilerplate. Unfortunately, for many companies, an official boilerplate is non-existent. A boilerplate is the “About Us” paragraph that is consistently used as the company’s official short bio. Boilerplates most commonly appear at the end of a news release, and it is a brief official description of the company; however, boilerplates can also be used in multiple other ways. • Company website • LinkedIn company page profile • Tradeshow profiles • Printed materials / brochures • Speaker submission forms / Speaker bios • Award submission forms • Online directories • Official government documents • Event promo • Advertising • Etc. Make sure you have a well-thought out boilerplate for your company (or your clients). It is not a good idea to throw one together at the last minute because you have a news release that is about to be published. A boilerplate should be about three to five short sentences. A boilerplate will serve as your written elevator speech that can be used over and over. A good boilerplate should include: • You company name • Company location (city, state) • Company’s mission • Something noteworthy about your company. • A single sentence that describes what your company does. • Link to your website or social media accounts. Below is an example of our boilerplate. SowGrow Public Relations turns your B2B company into a force that cannot be ignored by the media, your competition and the buyers you want to attract. The firm specializes in increasing the top line revenue of B2B companies with complex or high-investment products or services. Since 2006, clients have been featured by hundreds of media outlets including CNN, Fox Business News, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Wall Street Journal, and a myriad of trade publications. For more information, visit www.SowGrowPR.com. Don’t neglect the boilerplate. It is a powerful tool!Like
- Public RelationsNearly everyone wants media coverage of their company, but few receive it. Why? Below are five reasons your company may not be receiving the attention you want from the media. 1) You are not doing anything new. If you are saying the same thing, doing the same thing and going in the same direction as everyone else, you are unlikely to get media exposure. Journalists want to cover companies that are pushing boundaries, setting new standards and forging new roads. It is ok if you want to just do a good job at what you do, but if you want media coverage, you will have to put some new ideas and thoughts into the market. 2) Your branding is not clear or distinct. If you are not clear about your key message or vision, do not expect someone else to be able to articulate it for you in an article or interview. The time to develop a key message for your company is NOT when you are sitting in front of a journalist during an interview. You need to have your key messaging, point of differentiation, and visual branding in place before you can reach out to the media. 3) You are not going through the right channels. Many companies do not get media exposure because they only focus on a handful of top-tier publications that are hard to get into. Start small with local media outlets, podcasts, and industry trade publications. The more media coverage you get in small media outlets, the more likely you are to get media coverage in top-tier media outlets. 4) You are not being proactive about pitching your story. If you are waiting around for the media to knock on your door and want to write a story about you, you will likely be waiting for a very long time. Possibly forever. You have to push content to the media. You often have to actively email dozens of pitches to get a placement. Even if you post a news release online, you often only get media coverage by pitching the news release directly to individual editors. 5) Your content is overly self-promotional. When you pitch story ideas to editors and journalists, you have to consider what is in it for the reader / viewer. It may be a big deal to you that you revamped your website or celebrated 13 years in business, but that does not offer much for your audience. Also, the advertising model has changed and media outlets are more savvy about requiring brands to pay for exposure now. To earn media coverage, offer content that is educational and informational, not an infomercial. Public relations is a long game. It is similar to exercise in that you only benefit from it or as long as you do it. Just as you would not expect to be healthy by walking only a few times a year, you cannot expect to increase visibility with scattered news releases here and there. The best public relations results come from steady consistent coverage over time. The payoff is increasing the visibility and credibility of your company over time.Like