This informal CPD article on Nation Building was provided by Brian Weatherley at B2B Media Training, an award-winning trade journalist, video presenter, business-to-business magazine editor and media trainer.
Media Coverage - How do you measure success?
The start of the New Year is always a good time to assess how much media coverage you’ve achieved over the past 12-months. But how do you measure success? By the column-inches you’ve accrued in hard-copy publications? By the number of visits to the media section of your website? By the ‘likes’ on your social media pages? There are plenty of media monitoring services (just enter the term in Google) who can tell you where and when you’ve scored with the press.
Realistically though, you can’t send out press releases every day. There’s only so much ‘news’ you can generate and besides the media isn’t going to cover everything you provide no matter how important you think it is. Media-savvy companies do more than just send out press releases, however. They also provide insight, commentary, and context. They track the trends and changes in the industry sectors they operate in and then, having created a strong narrative, share their thoughts with journalists on what they signify and their likely impact in the short, medium, and long-term. It’s what’s called ‘Thought Leadership’.
How to be a Thought Leader
Naturally, if you want to be a Thought Leader you’ll have to pro-actively track those trends and changes in your industry in-order to interpret them for the media and start a big picture dialogue. And the start of the year is an obvious time to have that conversation with journalists―not least if you’ve accrued 12-months’ worth of information to reflect upon and contextualize. That same data can help you predict trends and changes over the coming 12-months too. It’s also the perfect excuse for creating an annual ‘State of the Nation’ type press event.
Many years ago, I was present when a leading manufacturer launched such an event at the start of the year. The primary purpose was to remind journalists it was the market leader―using supporting industry stats it had collated which proved the point. However, it also used the occasion to open-up a conversation on the broader aspects of the industry, offering insights into various developing trends. It proved an immediate success, becoming a regular (and highly popular) first date in the calendar offering journalists a unique once-a-year window into what had happened in the business, and what could happen in the future.
Significantly, even when the manufacturer in question was no longer market leader it still held its yearly event, which continued to be well-attended by the media hungry for a big picture story. Moreover, the facts, figures and context it supplied had a habit of regularly popping-up in various general features and articles throughout the following year―and naturally, the manufacturer got a name check as the ‘source provider.’
Thanks to COVID, face-to-face events remain a challenge but there’s no reason why an annual ‘State of the Nation’ type event can’t be a hosted on-line. Done well it could earn you media coverage well beyond a press release. More importantly, Thought Leaders give journalists an excellent reason to keep coming back to them, not just for their news but for their knowledge, insight, and wisdom. Food for thought?
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