No Summer Vacation for Your PR Efforts
Now that summer is here, a lot of companies tend to give their public relations programs a summer vacation. In the process, they’re missing many good publicity and awareness opportunities.
It’s important to remember that the news media and industry analysts don’t take long holidays. For the media, they’re always publishing and they’re always in need of content. If they’re not writing about you, it will just be someone else in your industry.
In this country, we’re not quite like Europe yet, where business seems to come to a halt for weeks at a time in the summer. But the trends, from what we have observed with clients, suggest we’re moving in that direction.
It is understandable. Few industries have major trade shows or events in the summer, and that is the time of year when most people take a vacation. So we’re not saying that you need to be gung-ho with your PR program like the rest of the year, just that you shouldn’t go fully quiet.
In fact, you can capitalize on lower levels of activity by other companies, increasing the chance that your news release or story idea will be picked up. Which means a greater chance of getting coverage. It’s just that there might not be as many people seeing that coverage.
So it comes down to this: Would you choose a higher chance of getting covered, and being seen by 80 percent of your audience? Or would you rather wait until when everyone else is competing for media coverage, resulting in a lower chance of being seen … but by a larger audience?
It’s not the ideal analogy, but along those lines, would you prefer to win the lottery and claim a smaller jackpot, or have a lower chance of winning a bigger jackpot?
Our advice is to maintain a baseline level of activity, even if you do back off. And then use the extra time and resources during the summer to strategize, plan, and work on all the news and outreach that you will be going forward with during the final four months of the year. Then when the school bell rings in September, it will serve as your alarm clock to rouse a strong round of activity.