Media release, a piece of marketing strategy most small-medium brands tend to ignore for three obvious reasons. One, they don’t have someone good enough to write it. Two, they don’t have the right contact within the media community to push it through. And three, they don’t have the financial strength to pay for the publications to display their news.
Why is this happening? One probable reason is that these small and medium brands don’t have a proper marketing strategy in place. When they do not have a proper marketing strategy in place, they will approach their marketing based on what they read, what they see and follow whom they think is right. When they do this, their marketing will become haywire and piece-meal, heading to an unknown destination. Further, the talents they’re hiring will definitely be inaccurate too.
Making the move right again
When it comes to media releases, there are a few key steps small brands can undo those ‘mistakes’ and make their marketing moves right again.
Hire a content writer. This is the first thing I would do. If they can afford to hire a full-time content writer, they should get one. This person must be able to write not just powerful media releases, but also stories, articles, bylines for the C-suites and copywriting as well. For small-medium business owners who are growing their businesses cautiously, the other route they can take is by engaging content writers via an on-demand basis. On-demand refers to an engagement between a company and the service provider that is based on a project or assignment basis. There are many freelancers or service providers offering this sort of service and Business In Asia is one of them. In most cases, the on-demand service cost is reasonable and attractive.
On-board your brand to the right digital media platform. Let’s just say that you’ve sorted out the content writer part and today you already have a media release in hand. A well-written one. You realised that you do not have a single contact in the media or publishing industry. At the same time, you also realised that get this media release published, this gig is going to cost you easily between US$250 to perhaps US$1,500 per piece. Heck, this is crazy. “For this kind of money, it would be even better if I were to spend it on social media ads. I can get more exposure through this,” you whisper to yourself quietly. There’s a workaround to this. Find a credible media platform that has a great reach, especially the one that has your kind of audience. There are a few out there and one of them is Business In Asia. I am suggesting this platform simply because you can upload your content here at no cost. Yes, it’s free. Secondly, they are focusing on Asia, as their community are pretty much targeted within the continent. Their community of readers are starting to build up in Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and South Africa too. The other reason is that they have a decent ability to be found on Google and their ranking is rapidly increasing too.
Build backlinks. One good thing why publishing media releases on the digital media platform are important is because the brands can build backlinks into it. They can insert a number of backlinks in certain words or sentences that can bring the traffic back to their landing pages, products and services page or any other pages they think are suitable for monetisation purposes. They can also bring the traffic for a real-time chat session too.
Conclusion
Why media release is important? Social proof, this is the spot-on answer to the question. According to Wikipedia, social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behaviour for a given situation. Usually, social proof will act as a key driver in making the brand credible and reliable in the eyes of the people. The bigger the crowd is, the better it will be for the brand.
