A funny thing happens when a marketing tactic becomes popular. As more brands start using a technique because it helped others find success, that success becomes more difficult to achieve.
Take social media marketing for instance. Only a few years ago, it was relatively easy to jump onto social, build an audience and promote your content. Now that everyone’s doing it, though, it can be difficult to break through the noise. It takes savvy, creativity and a penchant for experimentation to connect with audiences.
The same can be said for press release and content distribution channels as more and more marketers are waking (back) up to the benefits of earned media.
In a recent study with Outsell, 81% of senior marketers said that earned media was more effective than paid. With more of us turning to earned media tactics like press releases, it’s essential to not just talk about content distribution, but instead focus on the smart approach to content distribution.
Before distributing your next press release, take the time to listen to your audience and align your strategy with the insights you discover.
Keep reading for the five ways media monitoring software and content distribution go hand in hand for communication success.
Find a newsworthy story angle.
Every press release needs a hook – something to set it apart from the thousands of other personnel announcements, product launches, and content marketing promotions out there.
How newsworthy is your angle, though? Run a keyword search in your media monitoring software to uncover conversations around your press release’s overall topic and then see if there’s a more specific angle you can take to fill a gap in those conversations.
Pro tip: Need some media monitoring inspiration? Check out yesterday’s article on Cision’s blog for the 9 things you might not be doing (but should) with your media monitoring software.
Decide between media+online or online-only distribution.
Although most press releases should be distributed to the media, an online-only distribution makes more sense for other content.
The choice to send your press release via a media+online or online-only distribution often comes down to whether or not your story has the potential to earn media attention.
By monitoring conversations on traditional and online media channels, you can make a more educated decision about whether or not you should use a distribution that gets your message in front of journalists or if you should focus solely on websites, blogs and social media.
Your distribution decision may vary from release to release. Stay on top of audiences’ shifting preferences by regularly running a media channel analysis.
Identify geographic and niche targeting.
After identifying the broad strokes of your distribution, you can turn your attention to distribution targeting.
Does your content appeal to a national, state or local audience? Which industries or niches would also be interested in your news?
Take the guess work out of these questions by monitoring your audience’s conversations. By knowing who’s talking about your industry, you can identify media coverage trends that inform the distribution targeting you select.
Maximize your multichannel strategy with monitoring.
Your audience is consuming content across multiple channels; your press releases should be everywhere they are.
Finding the right channel mix can be a challenge, but not impossible. You have to tune into your audience and where they’re active online.
Media monitoring can uncover additional ways to amplify your reach – such as the addition of a social media distribution like SocialPost or a multicultural newsline to reach Spanish-speaking audiences.
Uncover optimization opportunities.
Media monitoring is as important after you distribute your press release, as it is before you distribute it. Press release success should be determined by many different factors and the conversations happening around your brand after you distribute your press release are one piece in the performance puzzle.
Furthermore, tracking those conversations will help you uncover ways to improve your press release distribution in the future.
Perhaps you noticed an uptick in your target journalists’ use of video. Consider how you can incorporate video in a future press release. Or perhaps your press release triggered a shift in sentiment or inspired audience questions that could be addressed in future content.
Media monitoring can open up a world of opportunities for better press release distribution; however, you need a tool that monitors more than media mentions.
We’re excited to share that our parent company Cision was recently named a “Leader” by G2 Crowd’s “Best Media Monitoring Software” report.
Based on unbiased, third-party reviews, Cision earned the highest overall satisfaction score and the highest overall market presence score out of the 24 considered products in G2 Crowd’s Media Monitoring Software scoring grid.
Find how to improve your media monitoring with Cision’s best-in-class solution by reading the release and requesting a demo now.
Author Amanda Hicken is a senior marketing manager at Cision, where she directs the demand generation content strategy for PR Newswire’s and Cision’s blogs. She believes the key to successful content is balancing creativity, analytics and commonsense. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow her on Twitter @ADHicken.
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