By Olivia Schütt • Sep 14, 2020
tl;dr: Media Coverage requires a great story and a great DAM that gives press professionals access to your story and all related material; 24/7.
In digital marketing, a typical strategy includes elements of a combination of earned, owned, and paid media. Owned media is everything you produce and publish. Earned media is the online version of “word of mouth” which brings people to your website thanks to the power of a recommendation. Paid media is quite self-explanatory, it also primarily brings people to your website but you pay for the privilege.
All three elements aim to promote media coverage, which helps to raise awareness, get the word out about your brand and products, and generate interest. Unfortunately, this is not always the easiest thing to do. There are tons of tutorials on how to get media coverage. Even if you follow each and every tutorial, successful public relations will always be the result of hard work and careful planning, and maybe some intelligent use of automation to simplify the tedious tasks.
The benefits are often worth it: You get brand recognition, attract potential customers, recruit great people, raise profile with partners and potential investors.
The problem is that there are a lot of people in the market aiming for the same goal, trying to get the best media coverage. So your story and the way you tell it must be better than the rest. Another problem is that there are many more PR professionals than journalists out there (2014, five to one). Your story must be available quickly and be served up at the right time, or journalists will just choose a different one. There’s an ocean of material they can choose from, all available at a few finger strokes of a keyboard: it’s all about having your content in the right place, at the right time.
How to Get Media Coverage?
* see Google for more tutorials https://www.google.com/search?q=get+media+coverage
☑ have a better story (following journalism topics like human interest or popular news)
☑ have better storytelling
☑ have a consistent key message (by staying authentic)
☑ have better press photos (after all, a picture tells a thousand words)
🚫 have your briefings, visuals, pitches, and press kits available 24/7 - being ready for whenever the journalist requests the content.
Wait, what? The last one sounds too difficult? 🤷♀️
Availability of your Content
You must ensure that your story and all related materials are accessible by the media, ready for whenever they need to request that material.
Imagine the perfect story; engaging, interesting, and helpful with thought-provoking visuals. All of your own PR research suggests it has the potential to do well. You are expecting great media coverage. Then one day, you leave the office early to pick up your child, the journalist you’ve been chasing to cover your story Lois asks for your press kit, so that she can include everything in the evening edition for tomorrow. What bad timing! You don’t see the request until it is too late and another brand is featured.
Journalists don’t wait for you! There’s a whole world of content out there, from all the other brands, a DAM can put you ahead of the rest.
The solution is a DAM. Digital Asset Management systems, like Picturepark, are the perfect solution for managing your digital assets and making them available for partners, employees, investors, and the press 24/7 without any human interaction (if you should so wish).
In a different scenario: Lois, the journalist, has the link to your Press Portal which links directly to your DAM, enabling her to access published press kits. You’ve already selected which content is available in your press portal and Lois can download the required content, all in only a few clicks. Media coverage is secured. Best of all, you didn’t have to anxiously wait around for journalist inquiries - if fact, you didn’t need to wait around at all!
Access to your Content
Of course, some press releases and press kits cannot be published in advance and made publicly available. Stock prices may be affected by early publications and some fast-moving news… Well, it hasn’t happened yet, after all, you can’t plan ahead for all eventualities! Those should only be made available at the right point in time.
Picturepark automation enables you to publish content to press users based on certain criteria. In Picturepark you have a high level of control, via powerful permissions, to manage access over user roles, ensuring that only allowed users can use your approved content. Moreover, Picturepark offers a “User Approval App” that ensures that Lois, the journalist can sign-up and access the press kit in-time and without you reviewing or approving her.
Moving Into the Top10 Space with a Little Preparation and Automation
Picture the ideal scene: a famous watchmaking brand is working with a Digital Asset Management System to manage all product content and communication material. They usually provide all press kits via a DAM, working with powerful automation to set timers for publication. After all, they are in the business of time-keeping!
They prepare all material in advance, also managing draft content in the DAM. This allows for review and approval to work on the same originals. Updates can easily be done in the DAM by replacing original files, keeping the older versions linked or unlinked. The DAM will automatically generate press resolutions for images and video, without any user interaction and after every update, the press kits are instantly up-to-date.
This approach helped them to get featured in the Top 10 list of most authentic-to-tradition Swiss companies in a magazine, all without being notified in advance. The magazine just requested access to the press library when they were looking for a valid candidate, the press responsible got reviewed and approved by the “User Approval App” which gave him access to the recently published press kit.
“The article was a nice surprise on Monday morning.”
The Picturpark User Approval App
The User Approval App is a Picturepark service provider that administers user sign-ups and can review and approve users based on certain criteria.
It features a rich set of controls that can be configured upfront:
- Secure access token for reviewing users.
- Email domain filter for review.
- Assignments to default roles, as per the customer definition.
- Required mail confirmation before the review, to avoid bot sign-ups.
With your Picturepark in place, your press kit uploaded and your “user approval app” configured you can enjoy your weekend without checking for content requests via mail. You better invest this time by preparing the next engaging story!