When our clients garner attention from the media, the first reaction (after excitement), is “how do I best take advantage of this press for my business?” If the press is favorable, you can take advantage of it! Press is good!

If it’s negative, please contact our office and we’ll put you in touch with a few of our PR professional friends who manage crisis communications. 

PressGraphics from Marketing Acuity

1) Press creates awareness
People who might not know about your business, product or service are made aware of it. The wider the audience (whether local, national or international), the more awareness the press will generate. But, prepare for what you wish for: press for a product that’s not fully tested could be disaster if thousands of users flood your business looking for an experience, product or service that you can’t deliver. 

2) Press influences SEO
You can get a future traffic boost from press articles that remain online long after the initial release.  Press is great for search engine optimization, giving you important ‘back links’ to your web site that come with press-ready authority as a reputable referrer.

Do something with that great press!

But even more important is what you do with it. Press alone isn’t enough to generate interested leads, or converte them to customers, for that matter. It takes a lot more than an article or a feature on a news program to make it happen.

  • Create Content
    1. Use the blog on your web site to place a link to the press article or interview, and either a transcript (if the newspaper or media outlet has done this, do not repeat the transcript, as it can actually hurt SEO) or a synopsis. If they don’t have a transcript, feel free to transcribe it yourself. In either case, write a synopsis for the user, telling them what the most important points are and how they can utilize them best.
    2. Help the reader of the article learn more about your business, your products and services by posting related articles from your blog on your summary article from the press post.
    3. Include a relevent call-to-action that fits with the press article. For example, if you are an author and NPR interviewed you, you should include a call-to-action to a sample chapter of your book for download.  Your form should collect the user’s basic information so that you can e-mail nurture them following this interaction.
  • Reinforcement of the customer’s decision
    • People like to do business with people they like, whom they trust and think are smart about some particular area of expertise. We’re all an expert in something! Use your blog to prepare this content, and share this curated content with your audience of customers, prospects and evangelists.
    • They’ll feel better about their decision to choose your business, even if they are already a customer. Those that aren’t will feel more comfortable considering your business based on positive press.

Createthat summary article:

Create a synopsis of the content (or transcribe it, if you have the opportunity and if the press outlet has not already done so.) Use keywords in sentences that people might search for on this topic, including your keywords around your business. Creating context around why someone might find the link/article/audio is critical for creating relevance. We used to put up “newsroom” or “press pages” but we don’t any more. Good research shows these are the highest exit points for a web site. Blogging about it creates that needed context for your reader that says “what’s in it for me if I read this/listen to this.”

Share it on social media:

Tag the relevent publication as you share it (for instance, “We love this great article in BackyardJournal about our new custom planter designs [tagging BackyardJournal). We love how they’ve incorporated them into the customer’s patio design here.”

Here are our best practices for quickly promoting positive press via your web site and social media channels:

  • Craft a summary article on your blog, linking to the press article
  • Share the press post from their site to your social media accounts
  • Follow up your initial post with your summary article  and share THAT on your social media accounts a few days later
  • Share the post on your personal social media accounts to boost visbility
  • Send an e-mail out to all of your current customers and tagged warm prospects on your e-mail lists, linking them to the original press article and your summary article.

Be of help to your audience by helping them find and access the press article. The audio or article may be behind a contact wall, so people might not be able to click through to it,  so it’s even more important to do this summary article if that’s the case.

When you get good press, take advantage of it and let your audience know. They’ll thank you for it! Use your platforms to give  a boost to the publication and they’ll appreciate it too.

Need a little guidance when creating that summary article/blog? Download our blogging worksheet:

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