It’s Not All About You, My Friend

Why should you send traffic to someone else’s site? That doesn’t make sense, right? Isn’t the point of PR to drive traffic to your own site?

Well, yes and no.

Look – whether you like it or not, we live in a “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” business world. And an important detail that most people overlook when doing PR is that TV networks, radio stations, and magazines, like you, are in business. Their goal is to provide value to their audience. When that happens, their audience tunes in and they can sell advertising. When the media is considering your “wares”, they are looking to see if what you’re selling is going to be of interest to their peeps. But, that’s only part of the equation.

The next piece? They do a story about you. Then they watch to see how it resonates with their audience. It’s just like when you evaluate whether what you’re doing is working for you. Make sense?

So, what does this all mean? Here’s where most people miss the boat…

They think that once they get a media placement, their job is done. Au contraire mon frère! The work has just begun. You need to promote that placement.

Here’s the skinny.

By promoting your media placements, you do a couple of really cool things. Let’s say you land an article featuring your tips on NBC Chicago’s blog. By promoting that article to your audience, you’re providing them with great content that might make a difference for them. Also, you’re unconsciously building your credibility. (Just because they know about you and they’re part of your tribe does not mean they believe you’re credible.) And reading a piece by you on a credible media site might just be the ticket to move them from subscriber to customer. Get the picture?

But here’s where the real magic happens. By promoting your article, the media outlet takes notice of all the interest your article has garnered. Now – if you were in their shoes, what would you do? You would want them to write another article for you, right?

Ta da! Magic!

So, if you’re lucky enough to score a great media placement, don’t drop the ball at the field goal line. (I know, me doing a sport analogy… cool, huh?)

Have you promoted your last media placement?