The only thing better than free press, is free press where you come across as a market expert, thought leader or key resource. No doubt when you are reading your local business journal or even regional or national periodical and see a competitor’s name mentioned you are bewildered. “How the heck did he get mentioned” or “what is she doing that I am not?”
Press coverage is a prized possession, and it comes from consistent and persistent sharing of valuable content with your respective journalist. Ultimately, you want the press coverage where your audience is. For most commercial real estate professionals, this is on the local level.
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So how do you get the attention of local journalists? This week I read a blog post by Ryan Shaw on Inman.com. Inman is one of the better residential news sites, yet it’s stories are typically applicable to our commercial real estate industry. Mr. Shaw’s blog shared many thoughts on gaining the attention of your local press. Below is a bullet point summary of some of his key points.
3 ways to gain attention of local press
- Local authority links can put you on the map in a hurry.
- Combine unique data and research to come up with an interesting angle.
- Link out from your content marketing pages to your other web pages to spread the link juice around and increase organic rankings.
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According to Mr. Shaw, “local news reporters are the unsung heroes of the community. They are underpaid, have tight deadlines and need to come up with unique local stories quickly. This is where you come in to be the aspirin that cures their headache. The #1 thing local reporters love talking about is original research or secondhand research presented in a novel way. Luckily for us, there are a ton of organizations and government agencies that have already done the research for you. They have collected valuable data, and it’s just sitting locked away in ugly spreadsheets that no one reads.”
Certainly a great suggestion. One additional item about getting the attention of your local press. Mr. Shaw suggests “the trick with making content marketing work is to spend twice as much time promoting the content as you did creating it. That means you are going to be spending a lot of time pitching.”
Is this worth it? Well that’s completely up to you and your targeted return on involvement. Free press, may not be so free after all.
