How to make the most of earned media

Our responsibility as PR experts is to get the most eyes on your brand as often as possible.
Typically, that means securing interviews and placement in news articles; to leverage our contacts in the media, secure segments with TV producers and make sure you look and sound good for interviews.

Earned media coverage is gold. An article in a respected magazine about your restaurant’s grand opening, or a TV interview between a beloved local anchor and your executive chef, builds trust between your business and the community. Plus, the potential for the coverage to introduce your brand to thousands or even millions of people doesn’t hurt.

However, gone are the days that news coverage alone is enough to significantly impact a company’s bottom line. Because people consume so much content on so many different platforms every day, it’s nearly impossible to capture a consumer’s attention for long. The key is to maintain the story’s momentum and shelf life by leveraging earned media on your business’s other communication platforms.

So, without further ado, here are five ways to maximize earned media coverage.

Get social with it
Social media platforms are a simple way to keep the earned media hype train a-chugging. Each one of your followers chose to follow or like your company’s page. That means you have an audience willing to listening. So, give the people what they want and post a link to your earned coverage on Facebook, Twitter and – if you have a great visual to accompany it – Instagram, while including the link in the bio.

Step up your earned media sharing game even further with paid social media posts. This not only drives more people to the article, but allows you to expand your audience beyond those who already follow you. Through paid social media, you can carefully target who will see the earned media, and whom you target depends on your goals for social media growth and overall content strategy.

Utilize your newsletter
Including an article that features your company is perfect content for your external e-blasts. A news article legitimizes your brand and provides a source of education for what your company is all about.

Share news coverage with your carefully procured email list to expand brand awareness. You did make sure your business’s email marketing is GDPR compliant, right?

Post it to your newsroom
Speaking of legitimacy, creating a newsroom on your company’s website is a great way to show visitors that your business means business. These also serve as backlinks that make a significant impact on SEO ranking by improving your website’s prominence in search engine results.

Some companies prefer to make their newsroom more visual by developing a page that features the mastheads of all the news outlets they’ve been featured in, while others prefer to post full articles and links.

We keep it simple at TJA with a list of all of the news our team has been featured in, alongside our most recent press releases. It’s a no frills, no fuss way of showing we’re in the news a bunch.

Spread the news internally
We’ve educated a surprising number of clients about sharing earned media within their company. Your employees will appreciate being kept in the loop. This also can help build a sense of pride for your company and boost morale. Take this a step further, and encourage your employees to share on their own social media platforms.

Put it on your resumé
We’ll let you in on a little secret: TV news producers like to work with spokespeople who have done TV interviews before. Live TV interviews can be a gamble, and the more experienced you are, the lower the risk of something egregious happening on air. (QUICK TIP: Always assume a microphone is on and recording.)

That’s one reason why we carefully track all news coverage that we secure for our clients. We reference past interviews and can even create highlight reels to send to the more prestigious publications or TV programs to ensure they know they’re working with an experienced interviewee.

Sharing earned media helps to spread the good word about what you do, legitimizes your business and builds trust within the community. Yet, maximizing earned coverage has yet another benefit: it helps to boost the web traffic for the media outlets that featured your business, which is one of their key revenue drivers. Fostering relationships with media partners is yet another stepping stone to enhancing public awareness.

Plus, more visitors to your article’s web page shows there is interest, making it easier and more desirable for reporters and producers to work with you in the future.

Luckily for you, TJA is chock full of the expertise and talent needed to capitalize on earned media. We really mean it when we say we’re a full-service agency.

Maximize Your Earned Media
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