Start-up Surgery Series: how to get your PR coverage to work for you – part 2

What happens to articles about your company? Instead of leaving them to languish in a report somewhere, how could you be getting more value from them? 

In the second in a series of three blog posts to help start-ups get more from their PR coverage, we reveal what the experts do for greater impact. While our first post focused on maximising social media opportunities, this time we are looking at how to share coverage in-person.

What is so great about PR coverage?

Coverage featuring an independent endorsement is always going to be valuable: this coverage shows an expert has picked apart your news and decided that it is worth writing or talking about. And because of that, earned coverage can help in multiple ways. It can help you to increase sales potential, strengthen your organisation’s brand reputation, and recruit and retain talent. 

But if your coverage is listed in a spreadsheet and then forgotten about, you are not giving it a chance to make a difference to your brand.

 

If your coverage is listed in a spreadsheet and then forgotten about, you are not giving it a chance to make a difference to your brand.

Share in-person

Sharing your coverage on social media or in an email can feel intuitive. The coverage is online, you can signpost to it online too. But do not ignore opportunities to show-off your coverage in-person. It does not have to feel awkward or contrived, and here are three ideas to help you leverage your coverage to demonstrate your company’s credibility when you meet prospects and connections:

1. Show off coverage at events

If you are exhibiting at in-person trade shows or conferences, there are multiple ways to highlight your strongest pieces of coverage to the delegates:

    1. Showcase your headlines to everyone passing or stopping by: create a slideshow of key articles and run it on a loop on your booth. 
    2. Print articles on cards for delegates to pick up and read later (but first get permission – see point 3). Add them to a literature pack for anyone interested in learning more about your company, but lacking the time to stop and talk. Our clients have been successfully doing this for years.
    3. Print a very favourable quote from a piece of coverage on giveaways such as fabric bags, water bottles, T-shirts, etc.

2. Use your business cards

    1. Print that very favourable quote (provided it is short) on the back of your company business cards.
    2. Add a QR code to your company business cards linking to the coverage page on your website.
    3. Although not officially coverage, think about highlighting prestigious awards you have won by sourcing logos from the organisers and printing them on the back of your business cards alongside an outline of what the recognition was for.

3. Get permission to reprint

First, contact the publishers of your best articles to source reprint rights; this is a must if you want to reproduce an article in its entirety. Once you have permission, there are so many different ways to share (see below) that article. And it is definitely worth the effort! 

Coverage is a small part of a PR program

Coverage is never the end goal when it comes to a PR program; as a PR agency, we secure it to build our clients’ reputations, widen their customer bases, increase their market shares and, ultimately, benefit their bottom lines. So understanding how to make the most of it is critical.

Why not work with a PR agency that can help you make more of your coverage? A3 Communications is the data storage industry PR agency, and works with vendors to build winning brands that resonate with customers, partners, and top journalists, bloggers and analysts. Get in touch to find out more. And look out for the next Start-Up Surgery Series post, where we delve into how your employees could be your greatest ambassadors.

Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from - Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from - Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from - Google
Spotify
Consent to display content from - Spotify
Sound Cloud
Consent to display content from - Sound