Bootstrap your earned media in 30 days

So your board directors are asking about your visibility and brand recognition (and you haven’t employed Archie just yet).  We’ve created a DIY guide to applying the basic Who x What = Why formula to help you bootstrap some earned media in about a month.

Weeks 1-2: The Who

Create two columns in a Google Sheet (see our example used internally at Archie) and label them Publication and Reporter. As you scan your business media, jot down the name of the publications and the reporters you find yourself reading with most frequency. For this exercise, choose no more than five publications and two reporters per outlet (a universe of 10 reporters max). 

Weeks 3-4: The What

Create two more columns called Articles and Assets. As you read your favorite reporter’s content, add URLs to articles you wish you’d been in. In the Assets column, write one thing about you or about your industry that you would have loved to share for that story. These assets could be news, a supportive or contrarian opinion, or a data point. Be sure the asset would be helpful to their future reporting and shows you pay attention to their writings.

Week 5: The Why

This is the hardest part of meeting the formula. Create a fifth and sixth column and label them Me/Not Me, and Notes. In Me/Not Me you will add a check mark if you truly are the right person to convey the asset. Many times, you’re not.*

Here‘s a litmus test to try. If your email can’t be said in fewer than five lines (roughly: enjoyed your piece; the following points stood out; here’s where I agree/disagree; here’s value I can add now; my company does such-and-such I know you also value), then you do not have ‘the Why,’ right now, to push into the reporter’s inbox.

Case example. American Banker is one of the top publications in our authority list. We follow key paytech reporter Cheryl Winokur Munk’s articles. Cheryl was writing a piece on Pave, a new financial app from the creators of Zelle. By tracking our clients’ assets (such as POVs they uniquely hold on new financial applications), we had the Why to slide into Cheryl’s inbox and offer her the subject matter expertise and value-add of two C-Suite execs from two payments and engagement platforms, Dash Solutions and Solutions by Text. Both were quoted in her story. 

*Don’t fret the moments when it’s not your time. This is media earning, not buying. Maybe instead you refer the reporter to another source. Referrals are an equally powerful move that we’ll explain in a future newsletter, so be sure to subscribe here.

Who x What = Why. Our Programmatic Media Earning (PME) system regularly lands clients in AB, WSJ, TechCrunch and more. But you CAN do it on your own if you know who to do business with, what assets to give them and why it should be you right now to enter their inbox.

Follow this bootstrapping blueprint and you’ll find yourself earning goodwill, positioning on your thought leadership, and ever-greater visibility. If you want to learn more about our programmatic media approach, drop us a line.