How to Get Good Publicity

We've managed to get some pretty good media coverage in Swindon to promote the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge.

Radio

Brunel FM covered us three times a day over the two weeks of the Challenge at 8:40am, 12:40pm and 5:40pm. They gave coverage such as this brief radio update.

They have also done four interviews with us so far including this radio interview that went to air the day after the Challenge:

So how did we get this pretty sweet deal?

1. Add value to their business - We were able to offer them something new and Swindon specific to talk about which helps keep their radio shows fresh, interesting and relevant to their audience. The Swindon Challenged involved 38 organisations which collectively employ over 25,000 people in Swindon. We informally gave them exclusivity for radio coverage of the Challenge. We put their logo on the website. We encouraged Challenge participants to tune in to Brunel FM and listen to updates on how the Challenge is going.
2. Make it easy - We emailed them updates that they could easily read out on air. We gave them human interest stories.

Newspaper

Similar lessons can be learned when working with newspapers. We've had three articles in the Swindon Advertiser (the main local paper in Swindon) including this article.

1. Add value to their business - The Challenge is a relevant story to many of their readers (17% of Swindon's population was employed by the 38 organisations involved)
2. We wrote good media releases with assistance from the CTC that could easily be turned into good newspaper articles.
3. We took interesting photos and sent these to the paper (rather than them having to send a photographer out).  Interesting photos help make the paper more interesting to readers.

Newspapers often have a policy of not publishing articles based on press releases unless you spend some money with them on advertising space. So the CTC did purchase an advert space to promote the Challenge on and in return the paper wrote an article on the Challenge.

That might seem a little greedy of newspapers to operate like that, but the ad didn't cost a great deal and they've continued to publish all our subsequent press releases without us needing to purchase any further ad space.

In Summary

Keep in mind that it's an exchange when working with the media. They can help add value to your business if you can help add value to theirs.