It’s a rare company or individual that does something newsworthy every day, or even every week. If you rely on regular press release distribution to keep your name in front of journalists, you need to find other ways to get coverage when there isn’t much new to talk about.
One great PR tip is to create a calendar of story ideas that can help you create PR content and capture the attention of journalists.
You can start by finding a calendar of observances for your industry or the topics you’d like to pitch to journalists during certain months of the year.
For example, in September, health and wellness editors may be open to pitches and press releases surrounding Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, Baby Safety Month, Cholesterol Education Month, Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month, Head Lice Prevention Month, Leukemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma Awareness Month, or Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.
If your product or service can be tied in to any of these observances, you have a perfect reason to write a press release and distribute it to journalists.
You could also create a coverage calendar that is based on the seasons, holidays, your industry’s trade show schedule. Or a combination of all of the above. Your goal is to simply identify at least one PR opportunity every month of the year.
And if you send out an SEO press release on each of your targeted dates, you might benefit from trending news searches of that topic on search engines, gaining yourself even more web traffic and potentially helping your website rise in search engine results pages.
About Kathleen Hanover
Public Relations consultant Kathleen Hanover has been attracting media coverage with high-impact press releases and public relations campaigns for nearly 27 years. Her public relations work has earned coverage in local, regional, national and international newspapers, magazines, on television, radio, and online, including placements in top-tier publications including Popular Science, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Times, Associated Press, and many, many more.