This week Alan had the absolute pleasure of talking to the PR power house that is Kristel Valaydon from KV Communications all about how to get your content PR ready and how to to start thinking about PR opportunities within your overarching content plan.
Kristel works to help business owners and brands to achieve clarity, confidence and connection with their marketing and PR efforts. So why did we choose to chat to her? Kristel is genuinely one of the most incredible PR's that we have been fortunate enough to know in the business and love how she genuinely wants more people to recognise the opportunities that they can create for themselves by embracing PR regardless of budget.
One of the biggest takeaways from todays video is that PR does NOT need to cost a single penny. However taking the opportunity to consider your communications plan and making yourself visible will really help you to understand how to find press opportunities by simply utilising the content you are already putting out there into the world.
We all seem to forget that that big world wide web is where journalists and PR's like to search for their content. Therefore by ensuring your content is out there and optimised efficiently you have every chance of being picked up. Your social media and your online activity can actually help you!
Do you track your activity? Do you look at things like Google Analytics? the tools are there to help you to understand what is currently working and how you are being seen. Find out which channels are working for you, who's interacting with you and which content is being found.
One of the big tips that Kristel offered up within this interview was to make Google alerts and trends your best friend. Get to know what topics related to your industry are coming up, how are journalists writing about them, what kind of angles are relevant to what you do and layer that within your content plan.
By ensuring that your SEO efforts and social media hashtags are relevant to trending topics journalists are more likely to stumble across you in search. Equally, if you are creating content relevant to trending topics when journalists put out #journorequests you can be absolutely ready to jump on them knowing that you have something to signpost to within your own content.
It's a simple thing that we always forget. Journalists and reporters all all just humans. Taking the time to reach out and engage goes a long way. Rather than waiting for them to find you, go and find them. Find them on social media, leave relevant and meaningful comments, share relevant info. Go and get yourself noticed. Ensure that others see you as the key person of influence in your industry and therefore worth speaking to.
Kristel offers up so much gold in this interview and it makes so much sense. If you haven't yet watched it in full, grab yourself a cuppa and give it a watch. Make sure that you are getting your content PR ready in the new year as you never know what opportunity it might bring you.