According to the Public Relations Society of America, “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” That’s a fancy definition straight out of a college course.
In simpler terms, PR is essentially about getting people’s attention, earning their trust through free publicity. Here are two tips for spreading the word about your business.
Share Your Story
Newspapers, radio stations and television newscasts tell stories. The best way to get the attention of reporters is to share what is unique about the business, your products or the culture you’ve built, the problem you solve, or how you give back. Topics like these offer a hungry reporter the opportunity to report on something truly newsworthy. Does your shop do something unique that can be tied to a holiday or event? Let’s say your smoke shop takes steps to minimize your carbon footprint? That’s something to pitch before Earth Day. Take advantage of hot topics like CBD — your knowledge can be key to educating the public (and making headlines).
Share Your Expertise
As we just suggested, one way to get mentioned in the press is to promote yourself as an expert in your industry, niche, etc. Lets stick with CBD. Create a list of facts (or myths) surrounding CBD and it’s wellness benefits (remember not to make medical claims). Send that out to health reporters, so that when they are doing stories on the topic, they may interview as a reputable resource.
By crafting potential story ideas for the media, you aren’t just promoting yourself you’re also pitching a timely, useful story idea to make things easier on their end.
Here’s an extra tip for telling how well your public relations efforts are reaching your intended audience.
Use Google Alerts
It can be difficult to know if and how your small business PR efforts are paying off, but one way to track it is using Google Alerts . It’s simple to use—create an alert on Google by entering a “search query’—things like the name of your business, the name of competitors, your industry and any other relevant keywords. Anytime those terms appear on the web Google sends an alert about it to your email. It’s a good way to monitor your presence on the web and what people are saying about your business.
