Submitted by Ashley Cox on | 0 Comments
Sometimes press stories aren't direct features about your business, but they can be just as useful to you as they showcase your expertise in a specific niche, and simply by sharing that expertise your business by default will get highlighted and mentioned in a story. The more you learn to master and take advantage of these opportunities, the more chances you have of being mentioned in press stories and the more your buzz will build!
This is exactly what happened to Tin Shingle's member, Making Care Easier, who recently celebrated their first #Snagged press moment thanks to our exclusive PR Leads. Some quick background: Making Care Easier is a free website and mobile app which improves the way families care for their aging parents. They know that care giving is hard and that is why they have become dedicated to making it easier! What they didn't know is that landing press could also be so easy. Now onto their "Snagged Moment"...
Despite the fact that the PR lead they saw for a feature article didn't directly relate to their company's services, Making Care Easier (MCE) was determined to reach out anyway as they believed that their expertise from their field would be useful in the story. Good thing they went with their gut! The result: they landed placement, explained their services, and gained great exposure in a well read article on CNET. Julie Fry, co-founder of MCE shared this with us regarding MCE's PR campaign. "So far, we've had great feedback from the PR contacts from your site. We were in CNET today and have offers of guest blogs from a couple of different websites-all thanks to Tin Shingle."
So how did Julie land a story The story in CNET that was abut new technologies, specifically logging emotions and sharing them over social networks, and not directly about caring for aging seniors? How did a care giving company craft a PR lead for an article about new technological products? She shares the three strategic steps here:
Be Proactive & Prompt
After seeing the the lead on Tin Shingle, Julie crafted an email pitch and within one day she received a response from the reporter. Immediately she followed up, providing more information, and then received confirmation that MCE would be included in the article. Staying proactive brought prompt results.
Illustrate How You Can Contribute Useful Information to the Story
Clearly care giving isn't directly related to the topic of the article. However, Julie was determined to think outside the box and keep her tips general and applicable. Instead of only focusing on her company she explained shared her expertise surrounding the technology of tracking emotions. Thus the reporter was able to feature MCE in the story and share their quotes.
Stay Organized
Julie started a folder entitled "Press-Ideas Submitted for PR Leads" where each pitch was saved as a word document. This preparation allows her to refer back to her past pitches as needed during her PR campaign. She also created an excel sheet with to track press that she communicates with. This is an important and an easy shortcut for future pitches.
Landing press may not always be as simple as it was for Making Care Easier. However, by modeling your outreach and sharing your expertise like Julie and her team did, you will increase your chances of success and perhaps we'll be featuring YOU in our #Snagged series before too long!
