PUBLICITY helps you find good people (& helps them find you)
Recruiting and Sales are tough – fortunately, you’re an expert.
You see, fortunately, it also happens that you’re a good person. You’re smart, kind, authentic, empathetic and thoughtful. You think a lot about what’s going on in the world – culturally, socially, economically or in the world of work – and you have ideas about what could make the world a better, more ‘functional’ place. You have thoughts and philosophies to share regarding how people treat each other, how leaders can really lead their people, how to add real value in a business relationship, and even a thought or two about how the market works.
Congratulations –Your knowledge paired with your good nature and creative ideas sets you up to be a fantastic content creator – and a great candidate for using publicity to your business’s advantage.
Believe it or not, the world is hungry to connect with good people who care about making the world of work a better place to spend the lion’s share of our day. We want to work with and for these people, and we want to do business with them. News headlines often lead us to believe that the rapacious pillagers of the business world always win the day, but the truth is that while we may watch and read about their misadventures with a mix of fascination, disbelief and perhaps even a bit of disgust and horror, none of us want to go to the office and work elbow to elbow with them. We want to work with folks like you. But the question is, how do we find you?
The simple answer is establishing a PR strategy to build long-term executive visibility and community engagement for your company, and to employ a cadence of quick and easy publicity tactics to put you and your company out into the limelight with the audiences (be they customers or your future employees) that matter most to you.
Publicity can be used to shine a light on you and by extension your organization in a moment that matters such as when you need to attract great people to come and work for you – or attract new clients to come to an event and learn why they might want to buy from you.
To get a publicity engine running start by thinking of all the ways you might share your expertise and thoughts.
For example, you can:
- Start a blog
- Participate on a podcast (or start your own!)
- Speak before a local business or trade group
- Start a newsletter on an emerging business topic
- Host a webinar – advertise it to targeted audiences on social media
- Regularly post information on serious social media platforms like LinkedIn.
- Participate on a panel at an industry event, or an event at a college
- Team up with an influencer who writes about a topic you are passionate about
- Appear as a guest speaker in a college class, teaming up with a professor who teaches your subject
- Conduct research on something that might benefit your business – then publish a report and promote it in the press
Try to employ a mix of owned (self-published), earned (your expertise recognized by an outside entity) and paid (ads, and influencer engagement) techniques to build awareness with those you wish to engage. Content-wise, aim to blend your area of expertise with your beliefs about leadership, culture, and what makes for an engaging and fulfilling work environment. For your prospective clients, this not only shows you character, but it gives a peek inside the culture within your firm. Employees who are engaged and fulfilled also deliver the best customer experiences. Your soon-to-be-clients will not only be inspired, but they will also feel more comfortable doing business with you.
I know what you are thinking at this point – it all makes sense and you see how publicity can help you grow your staff and your business. But you’re a busy professional and you’re not a writer or a marketer – where will you find the time? That’s where employing a firm like Comm.ext comes into play. As a fractional communications partner, we can come in and help you get your publicity campaign planned, and even do some media outreach or writing for you to get your campaign underway. You remain in the driver’s seat. With an outside communications partner there is no ongoing salary and benefits to justify – you can bring us in as often as you need to ensure you have a good cadence of appearances to create the awareness you want and need with your target audience.
Not sure how to get started? Comm-ext can help. Drop us a line at info@comm-ext.com to chat about how we can help get your PR and executive visibility efforts underway.
