15 ways to publicize a major publicity hit

The next time you generate publicity in a major newspaper or magazine, or at a blog, or you get onto a TV or radio show, don’t stop there.

You also need to publicize your publicity.

That’s what Michelle Tennant of Wasabi Publicity is doing, after landing her client, Landmark Education, in an article headlined Friendly Fight: A Smarter Way to Say “I’m Angry” in  Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. She first heard about the need for sources when her company received a query from the journalist and posted it on PitchRate.com, Wasabi’s media leads service.

Turns out that Michelle already had had a relationship with the reporter. And she not only responded with her own client, but she did much of the leg work finding couples who the journalist could interview.

She emailed me earlier today to share the good news:

“A career high for me, Joan.  I just HAD to share it with you.  Masthead teaser of the Wall Street Journal for my client Landmark Education.  Here’s my blog post in case you can use it and remind people you were my mentor years ago!!!!  You helped me understand the subtle needs of newspapers because of your background.”

So I asked Michelle, one of the first graduates of The Publicity Hound Mentor Program,  to make a list of all the ways she’s going to publicize the publicity. Here’s her short list:

1. Twitter.com.
2. Facebook post.
3. Blog post featuring my role.
4. New business reference; secure quote from client and/or media contact about placement.
5. Suggest to media contact that I would love to help their media friends and co-workers (this landed me another HUGE top tier contact).
6. Add to new business proposals and new business conversations.
7. Thank media contact.
8. Create short Bitly links to track traffic inside social media.
9. Share with other media contacts, affiliates, family and friends about mentioning this placement in how to score PR, build media relationships and teach others about what it takes & how long it takes to score such a placement (look in mirror Joan–wink–you are part of this task).
10. Do a YouTube video promoting; discussing placement.
11. Schedule a teleseminar discussing how placement was generated.
12. Add to websites establishing further credibility.
13. Write “how to score media coverage like this” bylined articles for web portals, blogs, magazines and other media venues.
14. Invite radio and TV producers to interview me on how I scored the WSJ front page masthead.
15. Challenge potential new clients to find out from competing PR firms the size, scope and timing of their recent media coverage to see if they can top a WSJ front page masthead within the recent year; any PR firm worth their salt will have top tier media coverage in the past year or don’t hire them.

Michelle, by the way, is the consummate expert at piggybacking onto breaking news events to generate publicity for her PR clients. That’s why I invited her to be my guest on the webinar I hosted last year on “How to Tie Your Pitch to Breaking News and Make the Media Interview YOU.”

Many of the items on her list above come from years of generating media hits. Can you think of anything else that should be added to her list?