5 PR tactics to crack the news cycle

The strategies and tactics needed to get your brand seen and heard have changed in today’s always-on world. Much more is needed than the traditional PR route of crafting a press release, pitching to journalists and building a great contacts list.

You need to pick your tactics wisely. In this blog, we look at 5 PR tactics that can help your brand get the cut-through it needs to the audiences that matter.

The 5 PR tactics you need to know 

1. Newsjacking 

This is a highly effective technique that can really get cut through busy newsfeeds and elevate your brand. Newsjacking involves staying on top of the news, looking for the perfect story where you can insert your brand. Jumping on trending topics puts your brand front and centre when it comes to brand awareness.

Get prepared first. Know which topics are the ones you can hijack easily and comfortably. Build your story so that you can respond quickly with ideas, commentary and thought leadership comments. Some items you can prepare in advance and it’s worth getting these developed in advance.

2. Brand ambassadors

One of the best ways for B2B businesses to grow both on- and offline is through their use of brand ambassadors. These are people who regularly speak out on behalf of your brand time and again. While you think you may need an influencer at the top of the industry with thousands of followers, actually your team can be your best spokespeople.

Using internal spokespeople means your business will be represented in different ways, depending on their role and their relationship with you. For example:

• Micro-influencers may create social posts, blogs and videos about how they use your products or services.
• Spokespeople from your business will give talks about your company at events or make comments in the press.
• High profile individuals may mention your brand in their speeches or thought leadership pieces.

Be strategic about how you layer up the output of your different types of brand ambassadors to get maximum exposure across the board.

3. Use your networks

Find businesses that complement yours and work together to gain access to each other’s audiences. Joining forces is a great way to create winning campaigns to get attention and boost your brand.

Choose your partner carefully, find a company where there’s overlap in values and appeal, but ensure your audiences are different.

For B2B companies, partnerships might involve joining forces to co-launch a research report or co-host an event or webinar. This webinar, co-hosted by Ahrefs and Buffer, is a good example of two companies with complementary but not competing subject areas.

They can draw on one another’s expertise to offer a more comprehensive package and reach a wider audience as a result.

4. Pack out the press release

Sending press releases out to contacts is at the core of public relations. The rise of multimedia press releases has made life much easier for journalists and editors and is now the expectation. Include links that led to resources and multimedia such as videos and images.

Creating linkable, multimedia assets is a must to give journalists and editors all the information they need. In fact, journalists cited this as a ‘must-have’ in Cision’s 2021 State of the Media survey.

Cision analysed press releases distributed through its network and found that press releases containing multimedia elements had higher levels of engagement compared to text-only:

• Press releases with one image had two times the engagement
• Including one video had three times the engagement
• Multiple images resulted in six times the engagement 

5. Decide your speciality

What will set you apart from your competitors is your knowledge and reputation. What are you known for? What is your expertise?

Do some research and find out what the hot topics are right now. Discover what your industry’s pain-points are and then look at how best to provide solutions.

Develop it so that you and your colleagues become the established people in the industry to talk to about it. Start by booking talks for yourself at events, writing blog posts and guests about the topic.

• What are the most popular search terms being used to find your website?
• What internal search terms are being used in your site search?
• What are people asking your customer services teams?

Build up blog content and thought leadership pieces on these topics. Run webinars and conduct research that can be launched as a report.

These strategies will help improve your public relations, increasing coverage and search results for your chosen topics.

What next?

Love the sound of these 5 PR tactics but need some help embedding them into your PR strategy? Contact us today to talk to us about how we can help your business with winning PR strategies.