Creative Approaches to Securing Meaningful Tech PR Media Coverage

Enterprise technology month continues on the Inklings blog today.

We’re all drowning in news alert fatigue. Like most PR professionals, I get Google alerts for my clients, their industry, MY industry, their competitors, MY competitors… you get the idea. Couple that with the shudder I feel every time my iPhone pings with another (inevitably bad) major headline… the sheer volume of news, alerts and content has never been greater.

Our inboxes are a traffic jam of anxieties—alerts jumbled with unread missives from colleagues, friends and family.

For enterprise tech companies, the changing media landscape means there are fewer opportunities to tell your story through earned media. Throughout the month, we’ve been re-evaluating long-accepted PR practices. Today we examine some unique ways to break through the clutter.

To set expectations, we’re not talking about tactics like issues response. That’s table stakes and should already be happening. I’d like to take the conversation up a level and recommend four elements that illustrate a good story to pique reporters’ interest—regardless of the forum or venue.

1. It’s not (entirely) about you. There are two ways to get noticed—creating your own news or inserting yourself into the continuous news cycle. We’ve talked plenty about the challenges inherent in the former; for the latter, it’s determining where your perspectives overlap with what’s happening RIGHT NOW.
   
2. Curate your market identity. You WILL get noticed if you are the first technology vendor to share a genuine quote that actually says something controversial, counterintuitive or simply different. We’re not talking about shock tactics here—the goal is not “any PR is good PR.” Rather, it’s to communicate an authentic and genuine viewpoint within a market that breaks through the clutter and maps to the emotional drivers that are important to your key audiences.
   
   
3. Bring a unique twist to a timely trend. Holiday-themed predictions are a familiar, somewhat tired trope in the PR playbook. But what about those pop-up stores that take up vacant storefronts at Halloween? In a recent example, a colleague noticed a Halloween pop-up shop in her neighborhood, and it was the genesis of a PR campaign for a maintenance technology client.
   
   
4. Remember, it’s a long game. In today’s crowded, shortened news cycle, earned media may take longer than usual, or may not happen with a particular campaign. That said, good content is good content—and instead of the basis for an issues response exercise or contributed article, a pitch can easily become a blog entry for your sales team to share with customers and prospects. And today’s pitch may lead to next month’s earned coverage.