You’ve got a mention on a third-party site? That’s great! Don’t stop there, though.
It’s exciting to see your company get exposure online. Digital PR helps build brand credibility, and it can be a major factor in establishing trust with your target audience—but its potential goes far past the initial mention.
Here are ten tips you can use to maximize each mention and make sure you’re getting every ounce of value out of your earned media coverage.
When picked up by a publication, a mention will eventually go live, but this can take time. Watch for that to happen, and then use the fresh momentum to reshare their article on your own social media channels. This can maximize brand awareness—not just because it shows your own followers, but because it boosts the original piece’s traffic and helps it stand out, too.
And if you see the publication share it out? Even better! Incorporate that into your social media marketing strategy and help spread the word.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to enhance your online PR is to add an earned media mention to your email signature and hyperlink it. This pushes each mention out in front of a wide and diverse audience every time you send an email. A couple examples:
Your newsletter list is a curated collection of loyal customers, nurturing leads, and anyone else interested in hearing what you have to say. This is an opt-in community that is ideal for helping you build momentum behind your mention. Share the link to your organic media in an email newsletter to demonstrate your industry-wide appeal and, once again, encourage your own followers to visit the page and build traffic momentum.
Also called an “As Featured In” section, you can add a section to your website that features your media relations. This can be a sidebar, a footer, or even a section of a page as you scroll. One extra benefit of an “As Seen On” bar is that you can easily add to it as you build your digital marketing strategy over time, too.
Digital public relations doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. On the contrary, a good growth marketing plan creates synergy across all of your marketing activities. One way you can do this with each mention is by integrating it into your sales process. Depending on the circumstances, you can use it as a case study or even an example of your brand’s position as a thought leader in your industry. This reinforces your sales pitch to your potential customers and drives traffic to your mention at the same time.
Owned media (i.e. communication channels you control) can also help synergize a mention. Consider incorporating it into your content marketing strategy by writing a company or personal blog post that features your mention. This can be a summary of the post that links out to “read more,” or it can be a follow-up concept that ties into your original mention or uses it as an example.
You don’t have to restrict mention references to an “As featured in” or blog section on your site. Look for other areas where you can organically work in your earned media efforts, as well. For instance, a mention praising a certain feature of your product or service might be well-placed on a sales page that encourages a potential customer to move down the sales funnel.
Part of your PR strategy can be getting your team in on the action. While you don’t want to force anyone to do anything, you can easily generate organic shares for a mention by dropping it in a Slack channel, pointing out why it’s unique or special, and asking anyone interested or willing to share it on their own social media platforms. Take it a step further and write a few social media post options to make it easy for people to copy and paste.
A quick reshare when some press coverage goes live offers short-term support for a mention. However, you can capitalize on the long-term by adding it to a regular rotation of content posting across your social channels. Write new posts that integrate the mention in different ways, add the link, and remember to tag the writer and the publication.
Along with personal and branded posts, you can use social media to engage with your target audience and answer questions. Use platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit to share your expertise and help address pain points—just make sure to use your brand mentions as a resource.
Maximizing your mentions is a key step in developing your brand credibility and a well-thought-out earned media strategy. It takes the marketing spark that a third-party mention creates and fans it into a flame.
You don’t have to do everything on this list to optimize your earned media coverage. However, executing even a handful of these tips can turn each mention into a superstar marketing asset to enhance your brand reputation.
Don't know how to get some brand mentions of your own? We can help with your digital PR strategy. Trust us, it’s well worth the effort.
