PR Strategies for Businesses: Build Your Brand and Acquire Links Simultaneously

PR opportunities abound. You just need to know where to look. Every business should take a few moments to setup the two following processes to be alerted to new PR opportunities which will help in building your brand.

These two PR tactics are simple and free. They just require that you set aside a little time and effort.

1. HARO
2. #JournoRequest and #PRrequest

HARO

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out and is a free service you can sign up for at helpareporter.com. You will receive 3 emails a day that include requests from journalists looking for quotes or answers to specific questions around topics the following broad topics:

• Biotech and Healthcare
• Business and Finance
• Entertainment and Media
• General
• High Tech
• Lifestyle and Fitness
• Public Policy and Government
• Sports
• Travel

You just need to find the inquiries that apply to your brand and email your response before the deadline. Deadlines are typically 1-4 days from the receipt of the email so you need to set aside some time every other day or so to answer relevent inquiries.

If your submission is used in the journalist's article, typically they will mention your name and brand and link to your website in the response.

#JournoRequest and #PRrequest

These are hashtags used on Twitter by journalists looking for info on a specific topic.

There are 3 ways you can find these types of tweets related to your industry.

1. Manually do a search on Twitter for one of those hashtags followed by a keyword in your industry. For example, I found the following tweet when searching on twitter for "#journorequest seo".

Hi #DigitalMarketing friends, I'm looking to write an article on regulating the #SEO industry. Anyone willing to provide an expert comment? Are you for or against the idea? #journorequest

— Helen Pollitt (@HelenPollitt1) March 22, 2019

2. Use IFTTT to setup an auto response to email you everytime someone tweets using #journorequest or #prrequest and one of your keywords. This way you don't have to schedule time each day or week to remember to search Twitter for PR opportunities. You just need to take action when you receive an email.

Below is a quick tutorial from Mark Rofe with Rise at Seven on how to setup IFTTT properly for this purpose.

PR tip: How to use Twitter to land coverage. pic.twitter.com/HOsLJmvE6U

— Mark Rofe (@iamrofe) January 22, 2020

3. Use a nifty Google Sheets Add-on called Tweet Archiver. This tool will monitor your Twitter search query once every hour and pull in any new tweets to your spreadsheet. You can then open any tweets that you want to respond to and engage with the journalist.

Below is a video that shows how to install Tweet Archiver on a Google Sheet. Start watching at 2:08 for installation instructions.

Take away: Spend 10 minutes right now to set up the alerts for these two PR strategies and set aside 30 minutes each week to follow up on any new PR opportunities that come your way.

Happy brand building!