The role that PR plays, regardless of the size of your company, has become more important than ever. The PR industry has been one of the most disrupted industries – due to the changing media landscape and the rise of real-time news thanks to social media.
The internet spreads stories – fast. And that means good stories and bad stories.
With social media able to create a media storm within mere minutes, reactive PR is essential to protect your brand and reputation. Having a response to a negative story can mitigate disaster, protect your brand image and help bounce back from bad press.
However, proactive PR is another important component of a business – it can help grow your industry reputation, drive business, and increase your standing in the eyes of investors or shareholders.
Public relations can be ‘make or break’ in many situations, with the ability to big up a business.
Alli Webb, founder of Drybar, credits PR with kickstarting her business, telling the podcast ‘How I Built This’ about how a popular daily email, DailyCandy mentioned Drybar before it’s opening, and bookings exploded.
But, PR – public relations, is not just about press releases or issuing statements in a crisis. It’s about relating to and with the public, about how the public perceives you and your brand. It’s about liaising with media to help get your message out there and getting your brand in front of the right people.
In episode four of Savvy Talk, Maha discusses PR for start-ups, and says PR is important, but you don’t need to pay huge fees to an agency or have a large in-house team. ‘PR can give you a lot of mileage, and it helps you with investors. It helps with customers and for customer acquisition. So everyone kind of needs to know a bit about how to be a PR ninja.’
So you don’t have to spend loads on a team, just follow some quick, easy steps to boost your PR.
Some quick tips from Maha.
#1 Prepare your assets
Evaluate your social media profiles, your bios, your information and make sure it’s all clear and concise. You know your message and USP better than anyone else.
#2 Follow journalists and reporters on social media
This is to get an understanding of what kind of thing they’re interested in, what they’re writing about. This will help you to streamline your pitches to journalists. Know what they specialize in or are interested in, to refine what you approach them with.
#3 Newsjacking
Newsjacking is where you inject your idea or twist on a current news event. You can do this with your brand, find ideas and ways to talk to journalists by newsjacking and helping add value.
#4 Attend events
Maha says there are plenty of reasons to do this: “try to get yourself, if you’re a new company and you’re a startup, try to speak at an event because you get three hits out of it. One, you’re speaking on stage, so people are listening to you. You have an audience that is sitting in the crowd. Two, there are journalists at events. So a journalist might hear your story. You might have an opportunity to talk to a journalist on the sideline. And three, everybody’s holding up their phone, creating content at an event, at a conference to show that they’re there.”
There’s so much you can do for your business, tune in to episode four of Savvy Talk to find out how you can amplify your PR strategy without spending a fortune.
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