It really is THAT easy to get published.
When I started MC PR Agency in 2012 it was truly a public relations focused agency. We…wait…I (because there was no team in the beginning) worked feverishly to find opportunities, create content, write articles and develop PR strategies to get my clients published. And truth be told – it wasn’t difficult at all. Part of the success (and still today) is based on the more than 20 years I’ve spent in newsrooms across the country and my relationships with people in the media. What people who are not in the media probably don’t know is that we journalists are kind of like folks from a small town. Seriously. I grew up in Apopka, Florida. Have you heard of it? Maybe you’ve seen the signs as you’ve traveled in and around Orlando. Apopka was a small town where when you walked into Liggett’s (the local drug store that wasn’t just a drug store by the way, it was also the place I bought my ukulele to perform in the Dream Lake Elementary School ukulele band. Honestly! This place had everything!) you ran into everyone in town and you knew them by name. It’s as though Apopka represents the journalism community. Small and quaint. And if you don’t know the producer, editor, publisher, reporter or anchor – you know someone who worked in the same market with them. Developing a PR strategy meant developing the story, targeting the right media, markets and then figuring out who I knew in that market and leveraging that relationship. It worked! And actually it still does. Journalists are always looking for good content and I am fortunate to have a direct link.
Here’s the dirty little secret.
Fast-forward almost seven years later, and we (yes, I grew quickly and was able to build a team), like PR firms across the country, have had to change our approach to public relations. More and more media outlets are approaching content with a “pay to play” mentality. This means some of the content you are seeing and reading has been paid for. Don’t get me wrong – we do this for our clients from time to time, too! Sometimes media outlets will favor their paid advertisers and publish their stories pushing others off the page. As a public relations professional, I can appreciate this approach. As a journalist, to this day it blows my mind because we were always taught “news and sales operate separately.” But as budgets weren’t being met and advertisers were becoming scarce, this proved to be a successful tactic.
It happened to me.
For example, when MC PR & Marketing was the Agency of Record for the HGTV Smart Home 2013, built by our client Glenn Layton Homes, every media outlet in Northeast Florida and many others from around the state came to cover this showcase home built in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Except one. Why? Because we wouldn’t buy an ad. Buy an ad? This was a PR DREAM! Are you kidding me? HGTV was then and still is in the top 10 rankings for cable channels. Why would I need to buy an ad? We were getting PR opportunities weekly – print, television, radio, bloggers both nationally and internationally. Not to mention HGTV was running two different hour-long specials on this amazing home! But this local publication refused to cover the story because we didn’t buy an ad. Today, that mentality is becoming more prevalent than you might think.
Here’s the secret recipe.
We all know that a majority of people are getting their content on-line. People are “googling” what they’re looking for.
One last point, MC PR quickly evolved into MC PR & Marketing.
We knew that as the marketing world was constantly evolving that our business must too. Because, we know that even the strongest public relations campaigns need to be supported by strong marketing and advertising campaigns too.
