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Earned Media Attention and Expert Status

news” section on your site and keep it updated with mentions
and press releases. If you use Google Alerts, you can grab the
RSS for your company name or set up delicious RSS feeds that
automatically post. Print your one-page release in press release
format, and send it to your clients and network. You’ll be sur-
prised at the accumulated impact this little action has.

How to Use New Rules and New Tools to Create a Media Storm

Getting a feature story about your products, services, people, or com-
pany can be a tremendous boon for your business. Publications rely
on the trust of their readers, and that trust can be transferred to you
in the form of leads, referrals, and awareness when a third party, like
a magazine, endorses what you are doing.

A great deal has changed over the last few years in terms of how
you garner media attention, but the fact remains, it should be a major
leg of your lead generation push. By employing new rules of media
and public engagement, made possible in part by the new breed of
online social tools, you can create a steady surge of coverage that just
may turn into the good kind of PR storm.

Here are a couple of practices that should be worked into your PR
generation system.

Rule 1: Monitor in Real Time
Keeping tabs on what’s being said by leaders in your industry, com-

petitors, and even the daily news—monitoring the Web in real time
with tools such as Google Alerts or Collecta (www.collecta.com/)—is
a great way to help identify times when it makes sense for you to seize
potential opportunities and jump on trending stories.

When a video surrounding a news topic goes viral or a trending
topic gets hot on Twitter, you need to be able to create relevant ways to

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