Social media is a great way to get the word out about your business and its offerings. However, there’s an even better approach that takes a bit more work and planning but delivers much bigger returns. With a little work and ingenuity, you can manage your own publicity. Here’s why this is a more effective strategy.
A Focused Approach
Social media casts the net wide but is somewhat unfocused. You’re posting, interacting, observing, and gaining feedback, and all of this is helping to raise awareness. However, securing your own publicity is a much more focused approach that can achieve more significant results.
Publicity involves identifying journalists and influencers who would be interested in writing about you and sending them a story they can publish. This process puts you in control of what the public sees and how. By getting your well-crafted message in front of the right people who have a specific need for your product or service, you’ll get better results.
Better Credibility
Established publicity methods offer a better way to build trust with your target audience than social media. Anyone can start a Facebook Page or Twitter account and start broadcasting their message to the masses. Because it’s so easy to use, it can be more difficult to build credibility on social media.
Securing press coverage is an approach that makes you look more authentic. Your stories appear in legitimate publications, written by known journalists and trusted influencers. In this way, you’ll establish better credibility and build your reputation in the market.
Build Valuable Relationships
Connections on social media aren’t always genuine. It’s so easy to connect to people on social media platforms that many of these “friendships” and relationships can in reality be quite superficial.
When you handle your own publicity, you have to build real relationships with journalists and influencers who can report on your story. You help them by supplying the stories that you notify them of by sending them a media release. Journalists can then write the story to share with their audience. Over time, you can build strong relationships with these individuals who have large audiences of highly engaged followers.
Multiply the Results of Your Efforts
If you spend a set amount of time each day on social media posting and interacting, you’ll gradually start to see results in terms of traffic, engagement, and maybe sales. But social media is something you build gradually through your daily efforts, and it can take a long time to see real results.
The effect of having one highly-targeted story published about your business can go much further and more quickly. Unlike social media, this takes a bit more planning and preparation in advance. But you’ll end up with a message with much greater impact and staying power.
Taking Aim at Your Goals
What is your specific goal in gaining publicity? Because you’re in total control from beginning to end, you can better achieve your goals if they’re clarified. The specific goal you’re aiming at determines everything you do, from the story you tell to the publications you target.
Are you struggling to secure the publicity you want through social media only? Check out my full program, where I teach you the A-Z of managing your own, so you hit your sales targets and help more people.
Joanne Rahn is CEO and co-founder of Zanthii Communications, a public relations company based in Australia. Jo has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of free publicity for her national and international clients, on TV, radio and leading online publications.
