I’m about to launch into major 2021 planning mode. I have notebooks, coloured pens, a social media scheduler, a list of awareness days, a mind full of big ideas and a day booked out in my diary to release all those ideas from my head onto paper.
As well as working on my own plans I have also been putting into place PR plans for all my clients. Outlining what I am going to be working on for them for the first 3 to 6 months (depending how long they have signed a contract for) of next year.
Planning your PR is vitally important. I get a lot of people coming to me excited about a product they are launching in a couple of weeks or fizzing with excitement about an event they are hosting next week. In these situations I can usually do something at short notice, but with PR you get more bang for your buck by planning well in advance.
With national magazines working months ahead, top bloggers not having guest post spots available sometimes for a couple of months and influencers being high demand for several campaigns it is important to be ahead of the game.
If you are launching a new product it’s nice to get some local coverage but just think, with a little planning your product could be seen on the pages of the biggest glossies, featuring in a well thought out influencer campaign or you could have secured a guest spot on a fabulous podcast.
When planning your PR think about what services or products you want to promote each month and where you want to be seen, then work backwards. So, if you have a cool swimwear brand that you want everybody to be wearing next Summer and you want to be in Red or Women’s Health, you need to be planning to tell those magazines about it in January/February. If you want to give influencers the chance to create a buzz about a new product have samples ready for them to be talking about before or right at the start of the product being available.
Get a calendar of awareness days and think about how your client might tie in with that. For example I worked with client who was a virtual assistant, the anniversary of her launching the business was in April. A business birthday or anniversary rarely makes the news without something extra added. I realised that April was stress awareness week so we decided to focus on how a VA can help relieve work stress for the self-employed. I gathered the work stress facts and the client provided free downloads relating to the tasks that people came to her most with (the ones they found the most stressful or time consuming) and we generated at least 8 piece of coverage targeting her ideal customer.
If you want to discuss how PR could work for you then book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with me.
Alternatively If you want to try your hand at doing your own PR then I have a Making PR Work for You course available and from now until 11:55pm on Monday 30th November I have doing a Black Friday discount reducing it from its introductory rate of £199 to just £75 included in the course is a 60 minute call with me to help you tailor what you have learnt from the course specifically to your business.
To download the course click the link and if requested enter the code FRIDAYLOVE at checkout.