“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently” – Warren Buffet, American business magnate.
Media relations is all about reputation, building your brand awareness and reaching out to new audiences who don’t yet know you.
Your brand’s reputation is everything. It’s everything you say, everything you do, and everything others say about you. It determines the success of your business and carries you through all of the challenges you’ll face on your business journey.
Media relations is your brand’s voice. It connects you with a new audience and gives you the platform to build awareness of your business: why you exist, how you’re different and what you value – your DNA.
Ultimately, it’s about building trust and authority in your brand, which are two crucial components for a strong reputation.
What does media relations involve?
It is the process of maintaining and managing relationships with journalists, reporters, influencers, editors, bloggers and any other key media contributors. You can do that through pitching stories or responding to editorial requests, for example.
With strong relationships, you can secure authoritative coverage and backlinks to your website in key media outlets. That builds brand authority and boosts website performance, and the more credible the publication citing your brand, the greater Google’s reward to your website in the form of search rankings.
Why is it important?
Media relations opens up a whole new audience for your brand by targeting media outlets that reach people fitting the profile of your ideal customer. By using helpful and engaging content, media relations helps you to build trusting relationships with this new audience.
How is media relations different to advertising?
Advertising is sponsored content that usually highlights a particular product or service, whereas media relations isn’t directly paid for, and it’s not all about selling your product or service. Instead, it’s about supporting your target audience, which means giving advice and sharing stories to help them to solve their problems. It is centred on trust, which is why it’s often seen as more credible than advertising.
Media relations vs public relations
Media relations is a strand of public relations that is focused on maintaining relations with editors, reporters and journalists. It helps to build your company profile across various media platforms, such as online, newspapers, radio or television. Media relations should work alongside your overarching PR strategy to be as effective as possible.
Could media relations benefit your business? Find out more here.
Key terms explained...
- Backlinks – a backlink is a direct link from a website back to your website. Essentially, it’s viewed by Google and other search engines as one website endorsing another.
- Editorial – editorial is a type of media coverage that reflects the editor or journalist’s opinion on a topical subject. This can either be written by the editor themselves or a trusted third party.
- Authority ranking – authority ranking is an independent trust ranking of a media outlet. There are a range of platforms that can share a media outlet or website’s authority, such as Moz. The more credible a media outlet, the more valuable it is for your brand to be cited within it.
- Pitching/selling in – this is the process of contacting the media with a particular news or story angle in the hope to secure coverage for your brand. Unlike the name ‘selling in’ suggests, no money exchanges hands, instead the aim is to secure editorial coverage.
Unsure how media relations could help your business?
Book your free communications review here:
Or book onto our free marketing workshop here:
Alternatively, simply fill out the form below and a member of the team will be in touch.
