It all begins with your story.
In an ever-connected world, with almost every single business vying for the top spot on social media, google search results, and other marketing channels – it’s increasingly important to tell your story. Honestly, it’s all people really care about.
Gone are the days where you simply put the name of your company and your contact details in your advertisement, now your brand story needs to be front and forthright in your marketing efforts.
Your story is your brand, and it’s the most memorable part about you and your company.
A story is what brings people together, something we can all relate to and engage with. Creating a narrative and conversation is the best single way to promote yourself.
Shaping your story.
Understanding your audience and objectives will help you to shape your story appropriately.
By understanding what you hope to achieve and what your audience is most interested in will allow you to tell your story in a way that will be compelling and memorable.
So, what’s your story?
Who are you? Who else works there?
What’s so special about you and your business?
What makes you different from your competition?
Why did you start your business?
What is the problem your business solves?
Who is your ideal customer?
Why should people care?
Is your story engaging? Or relatable?
Getting published.
To get published in the media, there is often a process of getting your company noticed by journalists and media – and having them be interested enough in your story to publish it.
You can do this in the form of a press release, which will allow you to provide your story to magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and online publications.
“A journalist is not interested in you or your message. The only thing they are interested in is a good story. So make sure you give them something that’s interesting that they can use!”
– Magnus Carter, Handling the Media
Writing a press release is not like any other type of business report or writing you’ll normally do for your business. You need to get straight to the point and provide the facts.
A press release should be objective, meaning you should omit qualitative adjectives or adverbs. You may say something is ‘first’, but you cannot say it’s ‘best’ – with no opinions unless you’re quoting someone.
The press release should be written in the third person (even if it’s about you).
Using your media coverage.
If you’re lucky enough to get some media coverage, you should now make the most of the attention by sharing your newly published story with your audience.
You’ve got some clout now, use it.
A good way to share your media coverage is to simply share it with your social media followers. It’s a good way to tell existing customers and people who know about your business that you’re getting recognition online, on TV, on the radio or in print.
But this only tell your existing followers about your coverage, what if you’re looking for additional limelight from a new audience?
Use your media coverage to gain new followers and to increase public awareness of your brand. You may wish to create additional content formats to share your coverage. For example, you could create a video from a newspaper story and share this on multiple social media platforms.
Rich media, video, and embedding social posts
If your media coverage includes your story published as a facebook post, a Twitter tweet, or an Instagram video – go ahead and share it. You may also decide to embed the post in your own blog on your website. It’s a highly effective way to include sources to posts and gives readers different types of media to consume whilst reading your content. This makes for a more interesting read for your audience and adds weight to your subject matter.
Below is an example of rich media/video embedded from one of our recent Facebook posts on “How to submit press releases and get publicity for your business“.
Paid social reach
To get even more coverage for your campaign, go ahead and allocate a budget into social media paid advertising.
The benefits of paying for additional social media reach include being able to control the location and demographics of your audience, you have the ability to track how many people have been engaged by your story, and provides you with the ability to retarget people who were most interested in your story.
Getting started with your local marketing campaign!
Go ahead and get started with your local marketing campaign, it’s not enough to simply get coverage once, you need to continue the momentum by communicating with journalists, the media, and your own customers on a regular basis.
Keep everyone up to date with your story, as it unfolds.
Get Guaranteed Media Coverage for your Business!
Get started with your local marketing campaign by telling your story and getting your message out into the public sphere.
Our awesome team will be happy to assist with you, to create your story and get guaranteed media coverage for your brand in the North East of England.
Just contact Firefly New Media UK by calling 01207 438 292, get the media kit for our publications, or contact us below:
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