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Editorial placements are a wonderfully reciprocal way for you and
media to work together for betterment of your business. The media needs to fill its pages and airtime with interesting information -- and you need to get word out to your market. Research media market to find those media outlets and editorial contacts with which you can forge that mutually beneficial relationship. But you have to do your part and do it right - or media will forge that relationship with your competitor. Make sure your media message is solid, contains newsworthy angles and isn’t disguised as overly commercialized ad copy. Have high-quality photos and media samples available and do all you can to make media’s job of featuring your product as simple as possible. It also helps to have some sort of clipping service in place to track your placements and get you copies so you can use them in your secondary marketing programs.
Expert Branding This type of publicity placement generating takes advantage of expert knowledge within a particular business. It is an effective tool for entrepreneurs whose businesses are more service related, like consultants or specialists. Expert branding basically treats expert like a product. Alert media as to your expertise on a specific topic and avail yourself to serve as an expert interview resource for future articles or news feature segments. Additionally, expert should write a few brief articles on a specialized topic and make them available to editors for review and possible publication. The challenge of this type of publicity placement is tedious task of finding out which outlets accept “expert editorial contributions” or contributed by-lined articles in their publications. Again, it comes down to meticulously researching your media market to find those media outlets that may be in need of editorial content that you can provide them.
With some creativity, expert branding can be effective for product-based businesses as well. One client of mine runs a fresh wild salmon distribution business in Pacific Northwest and was looking to increase consumer awareness of his products. Based on his more than 20 years of experience in wild salmon harvesting business, we are expert branding him as a viable interview resource to health/food editors for features detailing differences and benefits of wild salmon over farm-raised fish, as well as other related topics. In this case, my client (the expert) is identified and quoted in features and name of business and even a link to a website are often included for consumers to check out. This is great credibility building exposure at little or no cost.
Overall, when using media to help market your product or business, take advantage of as many FREE media opportunities as you can. If you lack expertise or time, a PR agency or publicist can generate editorial placements for you. But fee you pay them is a FRACTION of what it would cost you to buy similar sized ad placements. And those publicity placements typically lead to a much better consumer response right out of gate – which is just what you need to boost your business to next level.
Todd Brabender is the President of Spread The News Public Relations, Inc. His business specializes in generating media exposure and publicity for innovative products, businesses, experts and inventions. http://www.spreadthenewspr.com mailto:todd@spreadthenewspr.com (785) 842-8909
