What’s Your Story?

“Make the customer the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley

At ColinKurtis, we’re lucky to have some of the best talent in the industry. Today, we chatted with our own PR guru, Director of Media Relations Carrie Livingston, who generously shared her
top five best PR practices—we like to call them mantras:

1. Plan Ahead! (Editor’s note: by ‘ahead’, she mean months in advance)

• Pinpoint upcoming opportunities

• Reach out to editors and find out how you can help them

• Editors are:
  • Always interested in listening to your brand/company story, but you must quickly explain how your product solves an industry problem
  • Hardworking task masters—keep in regular contact with them, find out what they are working on next and make their job a little easier by sharing timely information

2. Make Time at Trade Shows

• Set up editorial meetings, and meet with editors one on one

• Share your story
  • Explain exactly what’s new with your company
  • Report how the industry and your company in particular are serving common customer needs
  • Share industry trends your company is seeing and responding to

3. Make Hay: While the Sun Shines, the Clouds Form, and the Snow Flies

• Proactively share your company news, always

• New product launches:
  • Are obvious and ‘easy’, but
  • Don’t occur regularly

• In the interim, share:
  • New promotions
  • New applications
  • Industry studies, etc.

• You must prove that your company is a thought leader—by sharing your story.

4. Use Your Tools to stay organized and ahead of the game

• Editorial Opportunity Calendars-always know what articles are planned for future issues

• Project Banks-keep projects organized and keep track of ideas for future press release or article

• PR Action Plan-an overview of what you want to accomplish this year and always have this at your fingertips to keep things moving when an opportunity (such as the editor calls you) arises

5. Track Your Success

• After you’ve gone through the steps above, track your success!

• Thank the appropriate editors and publishers too

• Share internally with your co-workers

HINT: Articles with successes are great tools for your sales team.

You can elevate your company to hero status—gratis!—by strategically sharing your company’s story.