Building strong media relations is an excellent business resource. Becoming a source for stories is a powerful way to build your brand and improve brand awareness. Nevertheless, reaching your target market through the news media can be a little tricky in the beginning, but once you learn the ropes it can become an incredibly valuable branding resource.
Building Media Relations
Today’s communicative arena is relatively complex compared with how it was 10 to 20 years ago. Businesses of our modern era need to communicate on a sophisticated level with their clientele and potential clientele – communication that is artful yet strategic. You need to make use of the many promotional tools available to you including public relations, online marketing, offline marketing and advertising.
The media is a free promotional resource however many businesses are unaware of how to effectively build media relations. But in order for the media to do their job properly they need resources from businesses such as yours. If you are an expert in your field and can offer interesting, useful information, then you are a valuable resource to the media.
By developing media relations you will gradually build up your visibility and credibility as a business, thus producing stronger branding and brand awareness. By establishing your relationship with the media you will also be able to be perceived through a reliable, objective source, therefore boosting the integrity and authority of your company.
Listed below are some top tips on how to build stronger relations with the media:
Become Quotable
A journalist or reporter is responsible for succinctly delivering news to the masses in an interesting and digestible form. Make your news newsworthy – learn how to deliver the right information to the reporter in an accurate and interesting manner rather than struggling to get to your point as a result of lack of preparation.
Never Manipulate the Truth
The truth eventually surfaces so always remain honest when it comes to offering information. If it surfaces that what you shared with the reporter was a stretch of a lie, you will not be trusted in future to provide quotes or information to that person, and as such will lose an important lead.
React Promptly
News travels fast so if you are going to develop media relations then you need to learn to keep up with the ever-changing pace of the news. Make yourself accessible to reporters to become a consistently reliable source that reporters can always turn to.
Summing Up
Media relations are an excellent branding tool. To boost brand awareness and promote your brand through a reliable, profile-enhancing source, take advantage of the media by following the above tips.
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