Public relations for digital businesses

Why do public relations (PR)?

Put simply, public relations (PR) is the art of managing communication between your company and your key audiences to build, manage and sustain a positive image and reputation.

Done well, it’s an extremely cost-effective way of marketing your business and the products/ services you offer.

“Done well, PR is an extremely cost-effective way of marketing your business and the products and services you offer.”

If these things aren’t important to your business, then perhaps PR isn’t worth pursuing. You just might not have a business for much longer.

How should we do PR?

A very broad question. There’s loads of ways to ‘do’ PR, so to speak.

However, in the vast majority of cases, small-to-medium-sized companies will find they get most success by issuing press releases when they have a newsworthy story, by building good relationships with key journalists, and by sending relevant stories only to the relevant publications and websites.

What’s worth writing a press release about?

Again, there’s loads of things worth writing a press release about, but here’s a few ideas: new client wins/ contracts (especially major or unusual ones); business expansion and new employees; unique or groundbreaking new products, services or ideas; reactions to news, events or reports.

How do we get journalists to use our story?

Simple. Give them a genuinely newsworthy story that is relevant to their readers and a good photograph, and you will stand a good chance of securing some coverage. If you’re unsure of what’s newsworthy, take a look at the sorts of story your target publications cover and decide whether yours fits their usual criteria. If it doesn’t, you’re likely to struggle and risk annoying their journalists by wasting their time.

“Be relevant and newsworthy and you'll stand a decent chance of securing some media coverage.”

Another useful tip is to ask yourself – or an objective outsider – if you’d be interested in your story if it wasn’t your company.

Do we need to hire a PR agency?

If a member of your staff is capable of writing a strong press release and sending it out to your key publications, then it’s often worth doing your PR in-house for the odd story.

If, however, you’re planning a more sustained campaign, hiring a PR agency is worth thinking seriously about. A good agency (choose carefully) should be able to generate a stream of positive coverage designed to boost your company’s image, aligned to your strategic goals during that period.

How can Codeworks Connect help?

All Connect members are entitled to a limited amount of free PR support.

What that means, basically, is that if you have a newsworthy digital story, contact us and we’ll either give you some professional PR advice or we'll actually write and distribute a press release on your behalf – according to the story and your requirements.