Everyone wants to be able to maximize and extend the life of earned media wins. With these tactics, you’ll be able to breathe more life into your wins.
You’ve received a great press hit or product review, but one great earned media placement only goes as far as the immediate audience. After the immediate boost from a press hit, it’s up to you to add more juice and maintain the life of the piece. By putting some budget behind amplifying a press hit, you’re introducing your message to potential new customers you can convert outside of your core audience, and extending the SEO impact through increased clicks. You can use content distribution platforms like Outbrain and Taboola to pass this story on to new audiences and increase readership – and in most cases for less than $1,000 a month!
These distribution networks place your content in front of engaged audiences on some of the most highly-trafficked areas of the web – premium publisher sites – while the reader is already engaging with content and susceptible to consuming more. Not only do you get exponentially more eyeballs on your content, but you extend its shelf-life. With targeting features, you’re able to get directly in front of your core customer so you can maximize the opportunity for conversion. Pro Tip: Content distribution has an advantage over search engine marketing spend as it doesn’t require that the audience has a predisposed interest in the topic; they might not be searching for you, but they’ll still come across your engaging and trusted earned media placement!
McDonald’s has used content distribution via Outbrain to amplify positive press hits. They boosted previews of their Fish McBites and new low-calorie menu options from trusted news sites, and the headlines then appeared on article pages of equally trusted article sites as recommendations for further reading.
The first step after you land a published earned media piece is to share it across every social media channel with copy that fits each platform’s optimized voice and tone (i.e., LinkedIn’s posts will be more professional, Twitter’s will be more abbreviated, Instagram’s will need compelling visual support). Think of the unique audiences your organization has (or wants to have) on each channel, and tailor the post accordingly. Hashtags are a great way to hyper-target to your industry and the subject-matter of the press piece; the key is to use hashtags smartly and sparingly – keeping it to one or two. Make sure to tag the publication and/or the reporter so they see you sharing their article or review. It’s great for relationship building, and you might even get a retweet to access their audience, too!
Don’t forget one of your most valuable resources – your people. Each of your employees has their own network, so be sure to share pre-approved tweet copy to make it seamless for them to share across their channels, as well. This will create a spider web effect, allowing your press hit to make its way in front of new eyes, as well as ones that are familiar with your brand through your employee’s association.
Be sure to have a “boost plan” in place before the content even publishes so you don’t lose a minute of momentum, after the initial buzz. Figure out the right media mix and timeline and phase it out to ensure you’re extending the life of your content. By putting a thoughtful strategy in place, you can communicate it across your team to arm them with the tools to disseminate (i.e., your sales team can put in place a plan to share with leads, your creative team can get cracking on designing some beautiful creative, etc.).
Facebook’s Boosted Posts and LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content are the fastest and most affordable ways to drive traffic back to your website or a recent press hit. You can target your core customer by demographic, job title, company name, etc. to get your placement in front of the right audience in case they didn’t catch it upon publishing.
The added life that a content distribution platform and social buzz can give your media wins can have your content circulating for a longer period of time.