The Best PR Tips We’ve Given to Our Newsletter Subscribers
If you subscribe to our newsletter you may have noticed that our welcome is *really* welcoming. Often, new subscribers send over their websites and tell us about their work. More times than not, we reply with a specific suggestion. So, we compiled some of the best PR tips we doled into this post.
Below you’ll see our favorite PR tips that solicited replies such as:
1. Tell the stories you want to see in the media
As you grow your business you will want to try and get press about you and/or your company as a whole, so you need to tell those stories on your site, through your blog, through your introduction copy, and through your social media.
It’s important to clearly state what you do and what your values are. BUT if you want PR you need to create more in depth stories about your brand, projects, and collections. Editors, potential buyers, and stans need to understand what sets you and your company apart from your peers.
For more PR tips about process check out, Why documenting everything is important for PR.
The case study in this post is about furniture design, but the concepts -- breaking down and documenting a whole process -- are useful to anyone writing about how their projects and work come to fruition.
If you don’t already be sure to check out Design Milk’s recurring feature Deconstruction.
2. Be a thought leader
The media loves a thought leader, and no you don’t have to be the CEO of a fortune 500 company to be one. If you run a business, you are likely already an expert.
Are you a furniture designer who’s an expert in the circular economy and buy-back programs?
Are you a travel photographer who can help people take great images with their phones?
Are you a boutique food brand that knows all about sourcing local ingredients?
Another key PR tip here. Ask for what you want.
We encourage you to be very clear and up front on your website about the opportunities you are looking for, especially in your bio/about section.
Something like “I speak on podcasts, write for publications, do in person/video workshops...etc.”
3. Take *great* media quality photos.
If you read our newsletter you’ll come to learn that we're a bit of a broken record when it comes to photography.
Great photography is truly the most important part of press outreach.
Magazines and blogs are essentially big picture books. There isn’t a design editor in the world who will care about what you’re working on if you don’t have big, beautiful photos to go along with it. Design is visual first, and everything else second.
Be sure to check out our Pinterest account, which includes tons of individual boards dedicated to media-quality photography ranging from residential interiors, to lighting, to tech products, textiles, accessories, consumables, and more.
If you’re feeling ambitious we created 3 guides dedicated to photography for media outreach.
4. Organize your assets.
Put yourself in an editor’s shoes. They have no budget, no time, and are bombarded with emails requesting coverage. If you want to rise to the top, you have to make their lives easier.
We advise everyone who is pitching editors to create personalized Dropbox or Google Drive folders for each editor so they have easy access and are not sifting through folders or dealing with unorganized zip files. When you do this you should also develop a file naming system that will be as easy as possible for editors to understand, like: “company_productname_number.jpg” or “productname_company_number.jpg”
5. Make sure what you do is crystal clear
Put yourself in the shoes of someone (like an editor who gets 100 emails a day) who has never heard of you and an email about you popped in their inbox. The first thing they are going to do is go to your website and your Instagram.
You have a few seconds before they decide to stay on your site or move on to something else. What you do and who you are needs to be crystal clear right up front.
If you are finding this post helpful we think you’ll get a lot out of our
5-Day Pitch the Media Mini Course
6. Know what your peers are doing well
We’ve all had that moment where we see press on a peer company and think “I can imagine my product/ project/brand in this article.” If this has crossed your mind you know exactly where to start your research.
Look at the companies who you admire and aspire to, the ones that have a greater reach. Follow them on Instagram, read their newsletters, go to their press pages and understand what photos and activities are getting them press. Make metrics based on this research, like, media outlets, story angles, and types of photos and styling.
Doing PR on your own can be overwhelming and it can be hard to know where to start, we’ll always say that the best place to start is research!
7. Have a newsletter & supercharge your sign-up
Every business must have an email list and an inviting sign-up form on their website. This isn’t only true for bloggers and consultants but also for independent brands and designers. Email is the number one way to communicate with anyone- future clients, collaborators, and fans. You should be using your list to share the stories you’re telling in your blog, plug press features, and announce your new projects.
8. Get ready for influencer partnerships
How to get started with influencer partnerships is a question we’ve been getting a lot. So much that we’ll be doing a more extended post on this topic in the coming months. In the meantime, if you are just getting started we suggest you start small when it comes to initiating influencer partnerships.
Someone with 5,000 or 10,000 very engaged followers in that overlap with your ideal client may be the perfect fit in this moment. And they’ll be easier to be in touch with. Also, don’t forget to ask your friends and network to share your content once it starts moving.
9. Pitch your products to gift guides.
One of the biggest opportunities for press happens around the holidays. Publications that typically don’t feature products, like a fitness magazine, open their pages for product coverage. You can find holiday gift guides in niche titles you normally wouldn’t be able to work with, vastly increasing the amount of PR opportunities! Check for yourself- our Gift Guides Pinterest board includes links to dozens of past guides.
If you think your products may be a good fit for gift guides be sure to watch our *free* workshop all about how to increase brand awareness with holiday gift guide press.
If your products are a good fit for gift guides and you want the full “how to” road map down to a weekly outreach calendar and specific email scripts for editor outreach check out our How to Pitch for Holiday Gift Guides course.