Everyone who wants their project to appear in the media has three words in their heads: “Press release” or its variant “press release”. However, you can also get a presence in newspapers, radio, television, or digital magazines through other techniques and without having to pay for advertising. And not only do I tell you, but the editor-in-chief of Emprendedores magazine also tells it in this interview.
So do not stick to having to prepare a press release and use other techniques that are also very effective. Precisely, in this article, I will tell you about this and I will tell you how you can do it yourself. But, let us start at the beginning.
Why are you interested in appearing in the media?
We are all interested in having more visibility and being better known, right? We want to have a community of followers whom we take care of through interesting content and by using content marketing tips on our blogs, email marketing campaigns, our social networks…
This is how we get our message to go further and further. We want to secure our place in an increasingly competitive market. Whatever your sector, the more your brand name is known, the more clients, more projects, and more collaboration options you will receive.
[Tweet “We want to secure our place in an increasingly competitive market @borjapolis”]
You want to grow and you fight every day for it. So why not use the very powerful loudspeaker of the media? You can do it by yourself through the techniques that I give you in this article and it will not cost you a penny. Remember that we are always talking about appearing in the press as news, through a report, an article, an interview… Not paying for advertising.
There are many radio and television programs, and specialized sections of newspapers and magazines both online and offline… You just have to choose where you want to be and where you can go so that your buyer persona knows you and sees you in the prestigious field of the press.
Is it possible for you to achieve this on your own, even if you don’t know where to start right now? Sure, keep reading!
Is it important for a marketer to get out in the press?
For any type of specialist, appearing in the media will mark a turning point in their project. Even more so if it is a marketing professional, he must take advantage of the tools that are in his hand to achieve maximum visibility and not give rise to that of “at the blacksmith’s house, stick knife”.
This will also generate quality link building, which we will talk about later. And it will give you a great impact on social networks. Think that the media, especially if it is digital, usually share their news on their social platforms. And, if you appear there, you will be having a great reach because these media have many thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter.
Also, when you publish this news on your profiles, the people who follow you will see you with even more power of influence.
And of course, this has great value as social proof, so you should put the logos of the media in which you appear on your website and your portfolio. This is just as important as testimonials from satisfied customers and has great prescribing power. Seize it!
What is a press release for?
The press release is a very powerful tool to appear in the media as news (not paying for advertising to appear in them). It consists of a text related to your company that you send to journalists and that must meet one of the following characteristics:
- Tell a story that just happened. For example, a recently completed event.
- Report something relevant about your company. For example, a solidarity action.
- Being closely related to some current event. For example, presenting some data that you have collected on the occasion of a ‘Day of’ (Internet Security, Community Manager, etc.). To get inspired, you can use the Aula CM calendar.
You will send this information by email to the journalists you have in your media database. When writing a press release, it must be done in an objective style, that is, as news. The media often copy and paste part or all of the press releases. That is why you should prepare it by thinking about how it will be published and that the journalist has to do the least possible retouching. Make it easy for him to establish a collaborative relationship!
[Tweet “When writing a press release it must be done with an objective style @borjapolis”]
If after what I have just told you, you have content to prepare a press release and you want to know how to do it, you can take a look at this article on my blog, where I explain how to write it in just 3 steps. Of course, you must bear in mind that the headline is super important. In order not to spend too much time on this and let you off the hook with a text, I’ll leave you with a practical video where I explain how to make the headline of a press release:
As you can see, this is a very powerful tool, because you are massively disseminating news to many media outlets. However, you will not always be able to use it because small businesses and entrepreneurs do not generate such a high volume of information as to send several press releases a year. But don’t worry, because there are other alternatives with which you can send your story or your information to the media and thus achieve greater visibility for your project.
What are my preferred alternatives to press releases?
As I have told you before, it is not necessary to send a press release to the media to get out to them. There are very good alternatives like:
- Opinion articles: Through opinion articles, you can develop a topic with enough length in a specialized media of your niche or a specific section of a general one. You can agree with them about the content of the article always thinking that it will be useful for your readers. It would be something like a guest post, with the difference that you are not publishing in a blog, but in a media outlet. I recommend that you analyze well where you are interested in doing it if that site gives rise to having external collaborations that are not from the editorial office itself if you are going to be able to place a link that favors your SEO positioning.
- Participate as an expert in an analysis of a current issue: If you are up to date with general news and current affairs in your sector, you can contact journalists to propose that they count on you if they write an article on that issue has just been published. arise. For example, when Twitter launches some important novelty when Facebook buys another social network when Google’s algorithm changes… The media echo this and also often contact experts to ask for their point of view. If you offer yourself, you give them a quick response and your opinion is also interesting (which I am sure it is) you will find your name and that of your brand along with other influencers in your sector.
- A report or interview about your project: You’re probably not Larry Page, but don’t underestimate yourself! If your project is interesting and the entrepreneur behind it is too, surely some journalist wants to reflect on it. Many sections cover these types of profiles. For example, you can approach a local or regional media outlet, as they like to reflect the success and bravery of their neighbors. And undertaking requires a lot of courage! Tell them what you do, why you are different, how you launched your project, and what your failures and successes have been. You can find yourself with a nice full page in which you are the protagonist.
How to improve your link building thanks to the media?
As you know, link building consists of getting other pages to link to yours so that your authority increases and thus improves your SEO positioning. To achieve this, you can send mass press releases to all kinds of sites to be published by one. This is killing flies with cannon fire and I do not recommend it if you are looking for appearances and quality links. There is also the option to buy these links in the media. If your main objective is to generate link building, you can do it like this. But if you want to go one step further and make your brand’s notoriety skyrocket and also get interesting links to your website, do what I recommend below. You will see how it gives you very good results:
- Never demand a link. Always respect the decision of the journalist who watches over the interest of the readers and respects the rules of his media outlet.
- Forms matter, and a lot. It is not the same to “order” him to place a link, to ask for it as a favor and in a cordial way. The answer will vary a lot, I assure you!
- Create a climate of trust and collaboration with the journalist. So you can suggest that you put a link to your website or a post on your blog to complete the information he has published about you without being too forced.
- Respect the decision of the journalist or the media if they tell you that no link can be placed, because it is their editorial policy. Do not force it, since you may be closing doors for the future.
- If you are very interested in link building, do a little analysis of the media you are going to address and stay only with those that usually post links to the pages of the companies they cite.
- Some sites place the link directly without you asking. It is quite common and, if in your specific case they do not, you can remind them with total spontaneity and clarity.
How to contact a journalist through Twitter?
A very practical way to contact the journalists you are interested in is through Twitter. Through this social network, you have direct access to many professionals who use it to get interesting information and ideas for their articles.
[Tweet “One way to contact the journalists you are interested in is through Twitter @borjapolis”]
In the following video, I explain how you can find the editors of the media where you want to appear. It’s faster than you can imagine and I’ll tell you in just 3 minutes. Hit Play and take a look at the video, which we follow below.
Once you have located the username of the journalist and you know that they usually use Twitter with some regularity, follow them and write to them to ask them to follow you. Here you can tell him that you want to propose a topic that may be interesting for him or her.
They usually have no problem following you. When you already have him as a follower, send him a private message briefly explaining the topic you want to propose and asking for her email address to send all the information there. Fortunately, you don’t have to stick to 140 characters here and you can expand a bit more.
When you have their email, send them the content proposal and any attachments that may be of interest to them. Have you seen how easy it is?
Save this contact in a database to save time if you want to propose a topic again in the future. I also recommend that you add this Twitter user to a private list so you’ll have quick access when you want to write back to them via direct message.
If you are very interested in contacting a journalist who does not use this platform, you can do this same process on LinkedIn or even on Facebook. Although the birdie’s social network gives me better results because of its great immediacy and because they usually have it installed on the same mobile, they see the notification almost immediately.
This is how Aula CM came out on the Marca newspaper website (and got a link to DA 86)
I am going to give you an example of a real case that we achieved with Aula CM so that you can see that it is not necessary to send press releases or generate very important news to appear in the media and also earn a high-quality link. You just have to be creative and act at the right time.
To put us in context a bit, I will tell you that this happened in June, a time when sports competitions celebrate their finals. This generates the maximum interest of the public and social networks are abuzz when a maximum attention event is celebrated. So we look at the Champions League final that Real Madrid played against Juventus Turin. As the specialization of Aula CM is online marketing, what we did was offer certain headers an article in which Bruno Vázquez-Dodero, director of the school, analyzed the impact of this final on social networks.
We turn to the most widely read sports communication medium in Spain, the Marca newspaper. But… someone had beat us to it and had already done this analysis of the Champions League final, which would be published shortly. A pity but, instead of lamenting ourselves for not having achieved it, this indicated that we were on the right track. That this type of topic could interest the sports press. So we decided to turn it around and look at other important events that were happening on those dates. And it turns out that we were at the gates of the NBA finals. This was going to have an even bigger impact on social media! Everything that surrounds big events in the United States has a huge echo and we were willing for the name of Aula CM to be linked to that.
So we adapted the theme and offered Marca an analysis of the battle that was being waged on Social Media by the two teams that would soon face each other on the courts to fight for the NBA ring. This article included very curious data from the Twitter accounts and Google searches of the two finalists and their franchise players. We were the first to offer this, and the journalist in charge of the section loved it because it complemented the sports analysis they had already done. Bruno himself, the director of the school, prepared the article quickly and gave a lot of striking data.
- We managed to get our employees and director to appear in a communication medium with 14 million unique users per month. In addition, the customer experiecne which the target audience consumes information about the NBA is quite similar to the one that is interested in going to school, so we were addressing a very specific and quality target.
- The media itself, in gratitude for this content of interest and for the speed in preparing it, placed a link at the top of the page, next to the title. Well visible to everyone! This link comes from a domain with an authority of 86/100, similar to ABC. Great for link building.
- As a moral of this real example, I want to highlight the importance of creativity when proposing topics to journalists. And also not to lower your arms to a ‘no’. When they give you a negative answer, look for another path that will take you to the goal you want. The result is worth it, right?
conclusion
In this article, I have told you how important it is for your brand or your project that you appear in the media as news. The press release tool is very useful, but it is not the only one and that is why I have emphasized other techniques that you can use if you do not generate a high enough volume of news to make a press release. Depending on where you want to appear, the message you want to convey, or your tastes, you can choose between the different proposals that I have mentioned. You do not have to stick to one, in particular, you can and should combine them. Finally, I want to emphasize that
