Startups are making headlines now. They are becoming great support for their country slowly but steadily. When you start a new company, you need to be visible so that you can get potential customers and sell them your products and services basically so that your company can survive.
Media runs the world, therefore they can actually make your startup visible in front of people. They can make someone billionaire, declare someone dead and can make someone a hero. No matter how much you hate or love media, it becomes the same for everyone when it comes to business.
Media houses can create great opportunities for businesses. Not only for big and established ones but for startups too. In this article, we will talk about how to grab the media’s attention towards your startup, so lets’ get started.
Benefits of Media for Your Business
How to Attract Press?
Benefits of Media for Your Business
Free Advertisement:
You will not have to pay for an advertisement to the media houses if they come to you for the story coverage of your startup. No matter how many people read blogs these days, offline media still have more audience than them, so it can make your company more visible.
Increased Users
As you are getting free promotion of your startup, you will see a bump in the user base after any media covers about you. As more people will read their news, more people will sign up for your service and will like to try your products.
Investment
You might end up getting funding from investors if they read about you and are interested in your startup and thinks that it can be a profit for them. You just have to make sure that the news covered by the media is positive in every way so that the investors can feel a spark and get interested in your business.
Quality Recruitment
Being positively featured in the media is a sign of a genuine and decent company. Your company can attract some qualified and skillful professionals who want to work with you because your company has a positive image. Employees are the roots of any company once your company get featured by media, good employees will definitely come around.
How to Attract Press?
Press Release
You can directly submit a press release to the news company. Most of the companies would appreciate your effort and your business might get featured on their channel or website.
Be Easy to Reach
Provide proper contact information on your website or social media accounts. There are times, media channels want to reach you but couldn’t, due to difficulty in contacting you. Respond to their requests and keep checking for these types of requests and be open to them as well.
Newsjacking
This could be risky. You should definitely not do this at the early stage of your startup. Newsjacking means to create breaking news or play a role in it. Obviously, you will try your best to keep it as positive as possible but the media writes what they want to write. Many companies get slammed even after doing good work. For this kind of option, experienced professionals and powerful contacts in this field is needed.
Show your Expertise
You can show off your expertise in a particular field to grab media attention. News channels often call experts to discuss breaking news. If you are not so free to do it, you can ask any of your employees to do it for the company, this way your company will be able to grab the headlines.
Reach out to Reporters
Reporters are the eyes of the public. If you have any contact, then you can directly go to reporters and ask them to cover your story. Reach out to them and they will definitely cover your story if yours is good enough.
Reach out to Bloggers
There are many news blogs out there. You can easily ask any blogger to cover your story, they will be glad to do so. You can even ask big news blogs and if not, you can also go for their subsidiaries, as most of the blogs have subsidiary blogs nowadays.
Guest Blogging
If you have good writing skills, you can use your talent by becoming a guest blogger and writing for some blogs. People will check out your profile after reading your content.
Launching Event
Throw a great party on the launching of your new product. Invite influential people in the party to attract the media. Be creative in giving the party a good theme, to make it look amazing, thus attracting the attention of the media.
Hire a Celebrity
You can invite a celebrity to come to your launching event. Most of the news reporters will be there as the celebrity is already a known face. This way, you will get the attention of the general public too.
Involve in Local Event
If you don’t have that much budget to throw a grand party just to promote your brand, then get involved in the local events. Get a list of upcoming local events and try to get involved in those events. You can sponsor the event or just host it. Moreover, you can ask your team to wear the companies merchandise and promote the product in the event or outside the event.
Tell your own story
Your own story can promote your product. Everyone likes to read successful people’s stories. You might not be so successful, but people will see you as a successful person once you started your business. Take advantage and tell your story to the news reporters.
Use Social Media Power
Use social media to create some strong campaigns to stand out from others and use that to attract the press. Modern-day journalism is all about social media and standing out there, so use social media to give you the required attention and buzz from the media. Using Twitter for such a purpose is a smart idea.
Use News Wires
There are many news wires where you can easily publish your news and other news networks will cover your story if they are interested in it. It works most of the time. You can also hire any news wire writer who can publish the news about your business for you.
Conclusion
Media coverage is not easy to get. But it is worth the hustle. However, you have to take care of the image of your brand. Media coverage is not always right. Not all reporters care for your image. They might write something which can lead to a negative image of your company. Once this happened, you can’t convince all people that you didn’t say so. Therefore, go to some good reporters only. Make some good relations with them, this way you can the deserving recognition for your business.
FAQs
How do startups get publicity?
Use social media, connect with reporters, tell your stories and user-generated content, this way you can get publicity for your startup.
What are the three types of media?
The three types of media are print media, broadcast media and the internet.
How to get your story in the news?
Connect with the reporters, make a rapport with and tell them your story.
