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Nov
21
Getting Press Coverage for Your Small Business Clients
November 21, 2005 | Anita Campbell
PR professionals who represent small businesses often have particularly difficult challenges. They are helping promote businesses that operate on a shoestring. Often the client has little or no funds for major campaigns. The PR professional is in the unenviable position of having to show results while the client spends little or nothing.
Here is one way to get superb press coverage. Invite a local newspaper reporter to follow the client company around. Give them access – completely open and unfettered access – and you may end up with newspaper stories and even a blog written about your client and its flagship product.
Think a newspaper would not be interested? It happened recently in Cleveland, Ohio, where a company called Findaway, with a new audio product called Playaway, gave access to a Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter.
Chris Seper, a respected journalist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, followed the Findaway team around. He wrote an entire series of articles about the Playaway product launch for the newspaper. The reporter even started a blog, called the Playaway Blog, about the company’s new product.
As this article by a Plain Dealer editor outlines, there are benefits to both sides in such activity. This article also explains what would motivate a newspaper to do such a series:
Why did we profile Findaway? As Chris notes, the biggest reason is simple: The team offered to co-operate. That isn’t an easy offer. Findaway had to let Chris in on its operations when it didn’t know if it would even get its products to market in time. And the team would have no control over what Chris wrote.
Another reason: From the start, it was clear Findaway was not a typical company. This series wasn’t just about being an entrepreneur. It was also about an unusual piece of technology. It was about people he knew could make for interesting copy – Chris was familiar with the Adcoda team from previous reporting. Those factors would help assure his editors that he’d be able to produce a series of broad interest.
One more: We profiled Findaway because the product did come to market and the team did continue to co-operate with us. This isn’t the first time that The Plain Dealer’s tried to tell the story of a start-up in such depth. Things happen: The company falters, perhaps, and clams up because it doesn’t want its failure made quite so public.
Certainly, Findaway got something out of its co-operation: Northeast Ohio publicity. But The Plain Dealer, and our readers, got a lot as well. Chris Seper’s series took us into the world of creative people we’d otherwise never know. It illustrated the ups and downs of entrepreneurs – bigger “ups” than most would have, but still, Findaway’s path was not smooth.
