Many companies can’t afford consistent Public Relations, or simply won’t spend marketing dollars on a neverending monthly retainer for their PR firm. This is especially true for social enterprises and nonprofits. Instead they may hire an agency for special projects, launches and announcements ranging from a few months to a year enjoying the buzz created by the campaign. Then the agency wraps up and poof! The steady stream of media attention dwindles and dries up.
I have good news! This doesn’t have to be the case. We tell our social enterprise clients all the time how they can keep the momentum going until we meet again. It only benefits us when we pick back up again.
- Invest 5 hours per week in PR outreach. Spread it across Mon-Fri or reserve one day to wear your PR hat, but this should be the minimum you dedicate to keep interest up in your company. Even if you don’t have any new products up for review or announcements, you should still be reaching out with your company’s core story and offer up different topics your C-level can speak to. Trust us, we get some of our best profiles out of evergreen pitching!
- Keep a Rolling Update. Anyone who has ever worked with Remark knows we love our RUs. If we’ve worked together, continue to use our template. If we haven’t, simply log into Google Drive and open an excel sheet. We usually reserve the first tab for coverage which has posted and list out the columns: Outlet, Writer Name, Date, UMVs, notes and link. Then we also have a tab dedicated to coverage still pending. If we have a brand ambassador program, we have a tab dedicated to recording their content as well. We update this document in real time and then pull our weekly reports from it. Which brings me to
- Weekly reports. Send these to your team strictly for external communication programs. If you already do a larger Marketing report, be sure to include a section to recap PR efforts and wins. Our weekly updates apprise our clients of pitch angles we’ve taken, angles we’re thinking about, PR coverage/interviews that hit this week and PR coverage/interviews we have coming up and overall feedback from our contacts.
This simple maintenance will work for you even without a fancy (read: expensive) media database and you’ll be astonished at the relationships you’ll build and the stories you’ll inspire and influence.
Got a huge project coming up or simply don’t have 5 hours a week? Drop us a line!