The public relations strategy and pitching paid off: You’re in the news. Congrats!

But appearing on a podcast, placing an op-ed, or earning a feature story is not the finish line. Yes, you’re in the news. But what’s next?

Use these four steps as a guide to help make the most of your media win:

1. Update Your Website

Your organization’s website is home base. It’s called owned media because you maintain full control over everything that’s on it. Let’s use that to our advantage.

When people visit your website for the first time, you have the opportunity to strategically tell them who you are, what you can do for them or their area of interest, and—importantly—prove that you’re the right partner.

Media wins, along with more traditional testimonials, provide that third-party validation that you’re the real deal. If your organization is racking up media wins and does not have an In the News page or section on your website, it might be time to create one.

2. Post on Social Media

If you’re on social media, your media win should be, too.

Depending on the type of news coverage you’ve just earned, use its strengths by creating a graphic in Canva, grabbing a screenshot, cutting a video or audio clip for a Reel, and so on.

The biggest opportunity on social is reaching even more new eyeballs. Tagging the host/reporter and news outlets involved helps your media win end up in their feeds shown to their supporters. Depending on the app, adding those handles as collaborators also plays a big role.

To be clear, not every organization needs a presence on every social media app. Our general advice is to figure out how much capacity your team has to maintain a social media presence well, and then commit to the platforms where your target audience most engages. Each platform has slightly different needs and benefits, so dive in internally to understand your chosen platforms or find the right agency partner to help you with this.

3. Send a Newsletter

Direct marketing still plays a huge role in supporter and customer engagement. The people subscribed to your e-newsletter chose to receive updates from you. These people are far more likely than random readers or viewers to buy into what you’re selling—literally or metaphorically.

This group wants to know about your successes. Share this media win with them.

If your e-newsletters follow a regular editorial and release calendar, make sure to include this media win in the next edition. If your e-newsletters go out more on an as-needed basis, feel free to blast out a special edition that celebrates and links to your media win right away.

Be aware of—but don’t shy away from—paywalls on certain news outlets. While it’s true that not every one of your supporters will subscribe to that news site, we still want to drive traffic to the original source and wherever the link lives on your website. Some news organizations increasingly look at click rates as one of the many influences surrounding story selection, so driving traffic to the news outlet’s site and making your article more popular can help make your future story pitches more attractive.

4. Reach Out to VIPs

Steps one through three deal with the masses. This step involves your VIPs:

Send a personalized note to your most important stakeholders. Not a website update, not a social media post, not a newsletter blast. Simply a quick but personalized email to your VIPs that shares the media wins and lets them know that you thought they might be interested in seeing the shared success. Sign the note with gratitude for their partnership and without an immediate ask.

If you’re a nonprofit, this advice applies to your board members and key, high net worth donors. If you’re a for-profit business, this advice applies to investors, big existing clients, and key prospective clients.

——————

With all this said, congrats again! You earned that media win. You’re in the news. The steps above share an introductory checklist of what you can do next to make the most of that win.

Ready for a public relations partner to help you earn and maximize media coverage? Reach out to Henrich Communications today!