The job of any good PR agency is to build the profile and create awareness of our clients through opportunities with the media.
This is the life-blood of a PR agency, however, it very rarely, if ever at all, falls into our lap. Instead, the members of our team must pro-actively search for and create opportunities, constantly keeping one eye on the news for chances for our clients to shine, and I’d like to share a few of the ways we achieve this.
With the move to an online-based infrastructure for news stories and a 24-hr news cycle, developing engaging content is still the best way of highlighting our clients’ expertise and so creating these pieces is one of the many responsibilities of the team here at C8. There are a few different ways to go about devising content, from creating original blogs, written by one of the team drawing on their sector experience, to selling in articles/blogs already created by the client, which we localise to ensure that they have a strong interest for the target readership.
The art of newsjacking is another method of generating awareness and column inches. The best public relations agencies are the ones that are proactive news hounds. Newsjacking is the technique of capitalising on a recent news story and weaving content or comments around this. Let’s say a recent cyber-attack on a major business has just hit the headlines. Well, this story could be used as a hook to write a piece on the problems of cyber-security in enterprises. Or we could approach our client with a view to putting out a comment that demonstrates their subject knowledge and expertise in the field. Both the article and the comment are relevant to current news and therefore get a boost in desirability.
Articles aren’t the only form of coverage an agency can get for their clients. Good media relations are essential to getting your client’s message out there. In a similar vein to newsjacking, comment opportunities or proactive media relations are all about capitalising on a current news story. We work closely with journalists writing in our clients’ fields, establishing what their priorities are and the kinds of stories that they generally work on. This means that they know they can always approach us for intelligent comment from our clients to expand and support their story. This offers clients a platform for media exposure and thought leadership in the process.
Like most PR agencies with a roster of international clients, multiple time zones can become a challenge when it comes to responding to comment opportunities in a timely manner. We resolve this by working closely with each client in advance to develop a matrix of authorised comments that cover the major trends and issues in their sector. This enables fast response to media enquiries and ensures our clients’ viewpoints are some of the first received by media on a tight deadline when a particular issue hits the news.
These represent just some of the ways in which here at C8 we manage to supply top levels of coverage and profile to our happy clients. We are always proactively searching for more opportunities to help our clients shine and the more efficiently we can get this done, while keeping up a high-level of quality, the better it is for everyone.