Media Relations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.