Whether it was the Wall Street Journal or Hometown News Radio
that quoted you last Monday, congratulate yourself. You have
achieved a credibility-boosting distinction that many businesses
never attain. And now let's figure out how you can derive
lasting benefit from your media coverage.
As soon as possible, incorporate your media success into your
marketing materials. "As featured in..." is a good all-purpose
phrase that impresses people. Even better, there's no reason to
ever remove this reference. Once featured on a TV or radio
program or in a newspaper or magazine, you can always tout that
having happened.
If you were highlighted in a publication or a broadcast that
included web coverage, install a link from your site to their
page about your company or you. Add a five-star media credential
to your next set of business cards or print up labels about it to
stick on your envelopes.
For print coverage, make nice-looking copies and mail them with a
personal sticky note to current and past clients and folks trying
to decide whether or not to do business with you. Include these
copies in your media kit, and in any portfolio you use instead of
or in addition to a brochure.
If you have an office where customers or clients come, frame
clippings and hang them on the wall. If you have a storefront
window, hang the clippings so passersby can read and detour in to
do business with you. Whenever possible, mount clippings where
they won't receive direct sunlight, and keep an eye on how faded
your copy becomes. I've seen restaurants undermine the effect of
a rave review because their clipping has faded to the color of
parchment.
Watch out for a few no-no's. One business owner I interviewed
for a Business 2.0 article excerpted long passages from my piece
at his web site. When I pointed out that he was welcome to link
to the article at Business 2.0's site but not to distort my work
by cutting the portions that were not about him, he sheepishly
(and wisely) complied.
Likewise, some publications want you to buy glossy reprints of
the article in which you appeared from them rather than make your
own. To stay on the right side of copyright regulations, you
should do just that.
If you have loads of media mentions, create a list of the media
entities that quoted or featured you and post that on your web
site's About page. Include the list in your media kit, too.
I've seen companies create attractive and impressive "Featured
in..." displays using the media logos rather than just their
names.
And suppose the media said negative things about you? It's okay
to quote and attribute the positive phrases sprinkled there
amidst criticism, as long as you preserve the meaning. From
People Magazine having said, "Excellent dreck!" you cannot
extract "'Excellent!' - People Magazine."
Finally, consider whether you can recycle the idea that earned
you media coverage with a different news tie-in or an updated
angle. Sometimes you can engineer a creative rerun. For instance,
in 1990, when fax machines were new, I got quite a lot of media
coverage for what I pitched as an "edit by fax" service. Five
years later, I successfully repitched the service as "marketing
upgrades," a low-cost alternative to the high cost of top-notch
copywriters. A few years after that, I reformulated the same
service as "copywriting on call," with a rewrite as close and
convenient as one's Internet connection.
With at least a few of these steps, your media mentions will
bring you long-lasting blessings!
Marcia Yudkin: Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free
Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and
eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or
her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success,
Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get
free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers
the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm.
