September 29, 2014

How to maximize press coverage for your startup or business

This article originally appeared on Moz and is republished with permission.

Post by Chris Winfield

Over the past 12 years, I have been featured in hundreds of major newspapers, magazines, websites and blogs (everything ranging from the NY Times, USA Today and CNN to TechCrunch, Entrepreneur and so on), and I can tell you first-hand that it has helped me and my companies in an enormous way.

It’s brought me:

Publicity (obviously)
Clients
Partnerships
Links
Traffic
Improved Employee Morale
Credibility
Money

Even more important, I have helped hundreds of businesses and friends get coverage. In many cases, the coverage they received was the tipping point for their career or business. A couple of weeks ago, someone who I met at a conference and became a friend of mine told me:

“Incidentally, your advice on PR in the past has been invaluable with [their domain] – PR is our biggest source of traffic by miles.”

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September 11, 2009

Why corporate blogging is like selling uncut cocaine

Or, why your company should tell its own story before letting others cut it up

coke My company, Spark Media Solutions, is based on the premise that every business has the capability of being its own media network. Given the endless tools for cheap to free production and distribution of content, there’s absolutely no reason a business must rely on others to tell their story. Yet for some demented reason, it’s still unbelievably difficult trying to convince corporations to do just that. Tell your own story. Businesses ingrained with the culture of “corporate communications” feel far more comfortable going through the traditional channels of PR firms, journalists, and bloggers.

Why would you allow the fate and success of your company to be based only on hoping that someone publishes your story correctly? Why not tell your story yourself? All of the people that companies traditionally rely on to tell their story (e.g., PR pros, journalists, bloggers) are not on the payroll. They have no choice but to hear your company’s story through a chain of communications. The net result is your story is published and distributed second-, third-, or fourth-hand.

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August 19, 2009

I would have appreciated an apology

This morning at 8:42 AM Eastern, Beth Brody sent out an email titled, “[Digitalbrand] New Social Media Marketing for Small Business e-book.”

Don’t get me wrong, I receive — and send — so many of these email pitches as a blogger and the president of a digital PR firm — and this was like any other — except for three important mistakes:

1) Brody spammed a list of hundreds of social media, marketing, advertising, and PR A-list bloggers and journalists

2) she sent out the pitch as an open CC email, so every single recipient of the list could a) see each-other b) reply-all and

3) Beth Brody or someone from Brody PR has yet (at 1:52 PM Eastern) to apologize via the “Open CC” email list, via Twitter, via personal email, via a blog post, via post, or even phone!

Learn more by checking out Twitter search and the recent blog posts by Jennifer Leggio for ZDNet‘s Social Business, Public relations fail: A lesson and a rant, and Ken Wheaton’s ADAGES, PR, E-Mail, Social Media: FAIL.

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