Media Relations

At Smart Connections PR, we leverage our long-standing and extensive media relationships to ensure a company’s messages reach the right audiences: shareholders, stakeholders, customers, employees and the press. It’s our job to make the brand shine, and to familiarize the target market with the company.

Smart Connections PR can make all of the smart connections for you

Smart Connections PR creates effective media relation campaigns that focus on securing media coverage in business, financial, trade and vertical media and highlighting our client’s messages. We leverage our long-standing and extensive media relationships to ensure your messages reach the most relevant audience, shareholders, stakeholders, customers, and employees. It is our job to make your brand shine, increase visibility, increase trust and reputation and strengthen relationships with all stakeholders.

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What is media relations strategy?

An effective media relations strategy utilizes a variety of methods of communication and actions to attract attention from relevant reporters and influencers. Employing effective media relations tactics brings media coverage, brand credibility, and stronger relationships, the media and current as well as potential customers/stakeholders.

At Smart Connections PR, we work with our clients to proactively create stories that resonate with their target media and influencers while ensuring they are prepared to react to any relevant news or changing milestone related to their success. We work with our clients to ensure that we define expectations for measurement and success at the start of any program including social shares, earned media coverage and share-of-voice relative to competitors over a period of time.


I have worked with Joanne and Dina at Smart Connections PR for many years, and am always inspired by their great communication, hands-on and action-based approach to PR. Smart Connections PR is a boutique firm that feels like it’s much larger than it is. The value I have gotten from our relationship is unparalleled. The internal feedback I regularly receive on Joanne’s and Dina’s work is always top notch – they help make me look good and make my job much easier. I highly recommend this experienced B2B PR team to any organization looking for a high impact PR firm that gets things done.

Kirill Kniazev, Marketing Director, Motili


Smart Connections PR produces consistently strong results for our North America PR program. Jo and Dina have served as trusted communications counsel for several years and I’m continually impressed with their creativity, proactiveness, and attention to detail. I highly recommend Smart to any tech startup looking to raise brand awareness and connect with the media, analysts, and influencers who matter.

Jim Crook, Senior Director of Marketing, Ctera

When we launched CloudCasa, our new Kubernetes backup service, Smart Connections PR got us in front of the key industry analysts and media outlets resulting in great initial and continuing coverage. Smart Connections PR continues to get us great thought leadership, quote and award opportunities along with helping us execute on them and providing needed advice to our marketing and executive teams

Mike Miracle, Head of Marketing, Strategy, and Alliances, Catalogic Software


Why work with us?

Smart Connections PR understands what it takes to showcase, amplify visibility and increase momentum for our clients. In this ever-changing PR landscape, there are a few winning strategies that have held true over time. A company that cultivates long term media relationships and understands how to “tell your story” are key differentiators. Smart Connections PR works closely with our clients to extract their stories and value propositions and meaningfully communicate these messages to their stakeholders.

Every client is unique, and every client’s needs are specific. At Smart Connections PR, our media relations strategy begins with really knowing our customers and highlighting their particular strengths in order to sharpen and focus their reputations and how they are perceived in their target markets.

We’re results driven

We’re results driven

Smart Connections PR is an active partner in our clients’ success, and we take this role seriously. Our principals oversee PR campaigns, pitch articles, and position our clients so their stories are front and center, where their customers can see them, and their industries can applaud them.

We’re team players

We believe in a personal approach. To speak on behalf of our clients, we need to be part of your team. Being fluent about what our clients are doing ensures that we’re never out of step with a change in strategic direction, a new product launch, or a crisis situation.

We’re team players
Joanne

It’s a competitive market and securing coverage with target media should be a priority; it is for your competitors. Smart Connections PR has long-standing relationships with reporters and publications across business, trade and vertical markets. It is important for your PR firm to develop messages and stories that will make an impact and help you stand out from the crowd. We can do that for you.

Joanne

We know who to talk to and when

Whether it takes us ten minutes to write a press release or ten hours to secure an interview for your company’s CEO with a global media property, Smart Connections PR has the media relations savvy, the mature relationships and the market knowledge to translate your corporate story into earned media.

A client can expect to work directly with the founders of the company along with a team of account executives to guarantee a personalized approach. We will spend time discussing the needs of the organization and the objectives that they would like to achieved. We work with both online and offline media as we feel both of these types of media are important in their own unique way. We take a proactive approach with media outreach rather than just a reactive approach to industry trends and news. We have spent decades nurturing relationships with journalists and analysts and these relationships are of great benefit to our clients.

They trust us

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should we work with Smart Connections PR?

The team at Smart Connections PR have over 20 years of experience in the PR sector. We have lived through the transitions and consolidations in the industry and understand how to create effective PR campaigns. The team has strong media relationships which ensure our customers messages are seen in this competitive marketplace.

What is the difference between media relations and public relations?

Public relations and media relations are terms that have come to be intertwined over time. PR is strategic communication process that creates relationships between organizations and their public and tracks brand effectiveness to ultimately provide insight into market message penetration. The media relations part is all about brand interaction with media and influencers.

 

While media relations relies on the media and influencers to tell a brand’s story, public relations is the umbrella under which it resides. PR encompasses press releases, social media, awards, events, internal communications, and traditional media to enhance and make known a brand’s reputation with their target audience.

Is media relations still relevant today?

Absolutely. In fact, we would argue that media relations is more important than ever in this competitive landscape. In this world of social media shares with information racing around the globe with the click of a mouse, thoughtful, curated earned media is the golden apple in a crowded orchard of opinions, hearsay and rumors.

How is pricing determined?

Smart Connections PR’s media relations objectives are focused on getting the job done – not on how long it took us to get there, or how much time we need to bill you. We don’t believe in billing hourly rates. It’s a counter-productive process and prevents us from doing what you hired us to do: increase your company’s visibility, position your brand against competitors, and present your executives as thought leaders. The Smart Connections PR team can work for you on a retainer or project basis.

What are some general principles of good media relations?

Good media relations equals good media relationships. It’s important that journalists know the agencies that contact them and more importantly, trust those agencies not to waste their time. It seems simple enough but cultivating media relationships takes time and trust. This is one of the biggest points of pride at Smart Connections PR. Journalists know us and trust us.

 

Is there anything – any person, any business, any technology – brought to fruition with a one-time set of actions? Our world is dynamic and so are our media relations campaigns. You as a client are constantly evolving and so are our messaging and tactics to ensure we are optimizing and evangelizing all that is positive about your brand.

How to measure results?

There are a variety of means of quantifying the impact of news coverage on different audiences. These range from benchmarking ‘share of voice’ versus the competition, to user generated data (like website traffic and conversion rates, even a good backlink from a well-trusted online publication can impact results.

 

Smart Connections PR works with its clients to find the most effective way to measure success for them. We offer several forms of reporting that provide insight into coverage, sentiment and ad equivalency, in some cases. The meaning of success is different for everyone and Smart Connections PR works to provide the most meaningful measure of increased visibility.

How do you secure media coverage?

Coverage is the bottom line of every successful PR campaign. To secure media coverage it takes an interesting story, and a company spokesperson that can tell that story in a compelling way. It also takes a PR person who has strong relationships, create the right story, and knows how to pitch it to the media. Those are the high-level steps for securing coverage.

 

But it is more than that. It’s engaging with a PR agency that has decades and long relationships with the media and influencers and with the fortitude to keep pitching until they secure the opportunity. Securing coverage is as much about persistence as it is about the message.

How to write to get a story picked up by the media?

At Smart Connections PR, there are a few different elements that must come together to ensure that once an article is written, it will be published by its media target.

 

Today, it is typical that a publication will be interested in articles that discuss a trend or hot topic and do so in a conversational tone. Articles must be easy to understand, but also delve into new ideas, technologies and use cases.

How do you build an impactful media relations strategy?

At Smart Connections PR, we are well versed in creating tailored media strategies for our clients. We talk to our clients about their upcoming news, interesting case studies and client outcomes and use that information in multiple ways.

 

Thought leadership is an important element in media relations today and we help our clients create articles that resonate with their target media. We also work with our clients to develop messaging that we pitch to media to secure interviews, podcast interviews and speaking opportunities. Our media relations strategy is unique to each of our clients.

What's involved in building a productive network ?

Smart Connections PR helps clients expand their networks, connecting companies with the media outlets that their customers and potential customers read and tune into.

 

Network and relationship building can also be accomplished through ongoing contact with industry analysts, influencers, and stakeholders. At Smart Connections PR, we create and maintain these relationships for our clients with ongoing outreach, briefings, and meetings to keep all parties up to date on the very latest news.

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