Top 5 Things PR Agencies Wish Their Partners Knew
By: Bohlsen Groups’ Earned Media and Account Management Teams
All content isn't newsworthy. This is always a hard one for our partners to come to terms with. Something that may seem important and interesting to you and your organization may not be ‘media’ or ‘news’ worthy. It doesn’t mean the topic isn’t important; we just think it’s not something that the news cycle would be interested in covering at this time. We follow news trends, what types of content gets picked up and what doesn’t, and we will communicate with you if we feel something you want to make a priority may not receive any pickup.
Our job is based on relationships with media contacts. There is a misconception about those in PR and earned media that we simply send off content to a list of media contacts and move on to the next task. The success of our industry depends on the relationships we build with the media contacts and the things we learn about each one individually. For example, if we know that Susan for XYZ publication has a personal connection with what we are pitching, we will reach out to her differently and in a more personal way than we would Katie from FGH who we know we need to give more of a reason to cover said topic.
Sometimes targeting one publication for coverage is more meaningful than targeting multiple. More doesn’t mean better. Sometimes a certain publication’s audience is so perfect for your priority’s message, it makes more sense to focus on getting great effective coverage in that one publication than focusing on multiple publications.
There is no such thing as over-communication. We want to act as an extension of your team, but in order to do that, we need to know when something, no matter how big or small, changes so that we can help communicate effectively and offer ideas on how to tweak priorities. We love it when our partners call or email just to bounce ideas off of us or talk through something.
Have clear and measurable goals. When we know what we are working towards it helps us guide our decisions and provide more effective suggestions for you and your team. Setting expectations on both sides helps the partnership be successful. At Bohlsen Group we usually do this through our client card, which influences our proprietary earned media measurement system. This measurement system is set up to encourage quality of coverage over quantity.