Category Archives: media relations

Shouting Your Next Big Media Win from The Rooftops

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Imagine: Your company name is in the headline of an article on a reputable, national news outlet’s home page. Your colleagues and industry peers send a few emails in congratulations and maybe you even receive some inbound requests inquiring about your business, but the value seemingly ends there. How can you keep the momentum going?

Company leadership who are not taking full advantage of their media hits, or simply do not know how to amplify them are missing out on the exposure a reputable news outlet could offer.

Can I have your attention?

Whether the result of proactive media relations or an unexpected story, a media placement can help bring your business to the forefront of prospective customers’ and partners’ minds. If managed wisely and consistently over time, business leaders can enjoy a continuous flow of media hits that can lead to new business, help with recruitment and pique the interest of investors or other business partners. Consider the following tips to expand on your company’s next media win:

  • Share the good news internally: Your greatest cheerleaders should be your team members. Leadership should share media placements with team members and suggest convenient ways they can use it if they choose. Your communications team can be a great resource in crafting language to share with employees, including guidance on adding links to their email signatures.
  • Get social: As soon as a media hit goes live, business leaders should have a plan to share it broadly, tagging the outlet and – in some cases – the author as well. At minimum, social media posts should be scheduled for the same day the article is posted and a company’s website news page should be updated to include the article. Priority should be placed on interacting with comments on the posts and employees should be made aware of and encouraged to interact with them, if they are comfortable doing so.
  • Market it: Connect with your marketing team to see where else it may make sense to share the article, including newsletters or external email communications. Keep in mind the content is likely owned by the publication, not your company, so be careful not to cut and paste directly from the article or post without attribution. It could be seen as a violation of copyright laws.
  • Be strategic: As you spread the word through social media and marketing materials, be cautious not to spam your audiences with the same content. Find fresh angles where you can change up references to the articles in posts and marketing materials.
  • Don’t rest on your laurels: While a one-off media hit can lead to a nice boost for business and search engine optimization (SEO), without continued effort, it will likely be just that – a one-time thing. Engage your communications team to build a comprehensive plan for continuous, thoughtful proactive media outreach. Additionally, your communications team should be building and maintaining relationships with reporters who cover your business, leaving opportunities for you to contribute to stories in the future. Consider partnering with a public relations agency for an extra set of hands when it comes to media strategy and outreach.

Whether a feature article or a few quotes in a reputable news outlet, make your media win more than a nice-to-have article to frame on a wall. Media wins give a company credibility and a tangible way to demonstrate your leadership’s expertise. Essentially, unlike advertising, a media placement can offer third-party validation that consumers seek before placing their trust in a company. To make sure your company is more than a one-hit-wonder with the media, consider amplifying your coverage and building a long-term plan for consistent proactive outreach.

InsurTech Insights USA 2024: Lessons Learned, Advice Offered

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Last week, two of my colleagues and I attended InsurTech Insights USA in New York to do a little networking. Having attended for the first time in 2023, what I’ve come to appreciate about ITI is the speed networking.

Like two unassembled IKEA furniture pieces, both parties to ITI’s speed networking meet-up have a purpose. But how do you make the meeting feel natural and unforced? This can be tricky without planning. It can feel a bit like trying to assemble said IKEA furniture while following a vague and sometimes interpretive set of directions.

At ITI, you can use the event app to make connections with other attendees and schedule a series of 15-minute speed networking meetings. The app does all the hard work in terms of schedules and logistics. It’s the human element that is both fascinating and frustrating.

Who speaks first? How do you start? Should a slide deck be involved? What about business cards (so many opt not to carry them anymore or lose them along with their checked luggage)? What are the takeaways or next steps? Should there be takeaways or next steps? What if you’re late for the next meet-up that starts the moment your current meet-up ends?

What I’ve Learned

For those who participate in these meetups, and some do not, the intentions of both parties are clear. Someone is selling. Someone might be buying. Sometimes both parties are selling. And, sometimes, someone took the meeting simply to be polite.

The good news is it’s a level playing field for insurtechs, insurers, vendors and others who choose to participate.

What I have found to work best is to keep it simple and be direct: Asking the other party to tell you what they do, who is important to them to grow their business and what problems they are trying to solve or what opportunities they are seeking. Always give the other party, when possible, most of the time. And – importantly – listen to what they say. Don’t simply wait to speak. If what you do, provide or sell matches up with their needs, then connect the dots for them. Otherwise, ask them what they would like to know about your business and allow them to guide the conversation. And leave the PowerPoint at home. When you’ve got about a minute left, ask if it makes sense to keep the conversation going. If agreed, exchange contact information.

The number of people I met in 2023 and again this year who said, “I’m not sure how this meeting is supposed to work” was surprising, but also honest and refreshing. They saw the value of the speed-networking meet-up. They simply didn’t have a plan. Maybe the above approach will help in 2025?

What I Suggest

Frankly, I’d like to see a bit more of this type of speed-networking at other insurance industry conferences. Just maybe not at the same volume or pace as ITI (you really do need comfortable shoes and the occasional bathroom break).

Insurance is a business built on relationships. With daily new entrants to the industry and younger generations working to build and nurture their own networks, maximizing in-person opportunities and building relationships are more important than ever. Additionally, as experienced executives begin to retire, some of their industry relationships run the risk of being retired with them. Insurers simply cannot afford for this to happen.

ITI’s speed-networking format can be adapted to serve nearly any organization. For carriers, re-insurers and others, this would be a potentially great addition to all-company staff meetings. For the industry’s many professional associations, speed networking could be a great icebreaker for new as well as existing members. It could also serve the organization to better understand their members and their needs in a direct way. The same is true for recruitment events, fundraisers and alike.

For insurance to innovate and grow into the future, relationships must be brought along as part of the compact. While ITI certainly did not create the speed-networking concept, its application of the concept – in my view – offers a road map to creating and carrying all-important industry relationships into a bright, energetic and exciting future.

Envisioning a Clearer Line from PR to Sales

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How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) on your public relations (PR) services? It’s a question asked of every public relations professional by clients and prospects frequently.

It’s also a question we wish we could answer with detailed rows of figures, colorful line graphs and a direct line to sales, but even in 2024, it’s not that easy.

Though we can — and do — give clients comprehensive measurement reports listing the circulation, readership, viewership or listenership of media outlets where they’ve been featured, as well as share-of-voice (SOV) reports, Google Analytics, and more, the industry is yet to develop that perfect algorithm or tool that demonstrates a direct line from PR to sales.

By no means does this mean our work is not generating sales and/or leads. In fact, experienced PR pros have clients say, time and time again, “We had a call come in from a prospect who said they were inquiring about our services after reading our contributed article in XYZ publication.”

For those in our profession, a statement like this is the ultimate compliment. We know, and the client knows, we not only positioned them in front of their target audience through a thoughtfully designed PR strategy, we helped bring, through our work, a prospect to their door.

So, how do you know your PR strategy is working?

A good PR partner will start with obtainable goals and consider a variety of factors to measure their progress. Key measures should include:

Comprehensive Metrics: These are critical in measuring PR success, but once again, you likely will not find an accurate direct link to sales. But there are plenty of metrics your PR team can examine to measure the success of a campaign.

For example, they should carefully review and measure unique monthly visitors to the host site, share of voice, tone, sentiment, reach, key word ranking, social media traffic and more. That information should be shared with you on a monthly basis with a media mentions report of articles, podcasts or other media where your company was featured during that month.

At the same time, to boost those metrics, your PR team should be working to secure backlinks in your media coverage where possible. Though some publications will not allow this, when permitted, a backlink can be quite valuable. Backlinks denote authority and raise the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website, as well as the authority of your content. If the publication’s own domain authority or SEO is considerable, that lends greater credibility from Google’s perspective. With backlinks and your website’s Google Analytics, your PR team can benchmark and track progress as to how the PR work is impacting web traffic to your site.

While ad value equivalency and media impressions were once the holy grail of PR measurement, these two metrics have since largely fallen out of favor. They are a “holdover over from print” and no longer accurate, according to PRWeek. Though impressions can tell you how many viewed and an article from a circulation perspective it fails to tell you how many times a physical article was passed around, how an article has been featured and circulated on social media, how long a viewer stays on an article and more.

Share of Voice: Share of voice, which should be included in the comprehensive metrics above, deserves a shout out of its own here as a key measure as it can offer a company critical insight into their own media footprint as it compares to their competitors.

The term share of voice denotes a measurement that encompasses a company’s print, radio, broadcast and podcast presence, as well as its online mentions and website traffic, among other factors. Share of voice is measured with a calculation of a company’s mentions divided by total market measures.

At Kimball Hughes PR, we’ve seen tremendous success for our clients in terms of growing share of voice via a strategic PR campaign. In fact, after one year of a PR engagement with our team, one of our clients saw their share of voice increase from just under 10% to more than 75% compared to their competitors. In addition to posting thoughtful press releases in tandem with the client, we accomplished this by leveraging insight from the client’s leadership team, by telling stories about relatable personal interests, tapping into industry trends and more to get in front of their key audiences in print, online, via broadcast and streaming platforms, via podcasts, blogs and more. Further, once these pieces of content were published, we provided recommendations and suggested messaging to amplify the article’s reach through social media.

New Business Origination and Leads: While these tools are helpful, as mentioned at the top, one of the best ways to measure PR success, is through a client’s new business wins after the prospect has read their insight in earned media coordinated by your PR team. There, you see PR’s direct link to sales.

No doubt, new tools will be introduced in the months and years to come to better measure PR success. In the meantime, be patient and open to considering multiple metrics in evaluating the success of your PR campaign.

Tampa: Hustle Capital of the Insurance Industry

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Target Markets 2024 Mid-Year Meeting in Tampa, Florida, made clear insurance is, and continues to be, a relationship business. This year’s mid-year meeting set a record with more than 1,300 attendees – more than double that of prior mid-year meetings for Target Markets. It was also my first time attending a Target Markets mid-year meeting.

I understand the attraction.

The first full day of Target Markets, Monday, May 13, was straight to business. Old friends reconnected while new acquaintances were made. Meetings were held over coffee, at breakfast, in break-out rooms and hallways, in the lobby, at the hotel Starbucks, over lunch, at the bar, across countless restaurant dinner tables and over drinks and at numerous private parties afterward. All this went beyond socializing as companies pitched, partners explored and new business partnerships were formed. The pace was hectic and heady, and it will be interesting to see if Target Markets offers an estimate for the business transacted in Tampa. The number of people who faced daunting schedules with back-to-back meetings, hoping to sign or write business, was impressive as they ran the gauntlet of two large Marriott hotels connected by a single third-floor sky bridge. The spirit of the 2024 meeting could be best summarized in a single word: Hustle.

Day two was a mix of the day before along with a series of programs and events that covered topics including a Lloyd’s Market update, a keynote speaker of remarkable tenacity embodied by Diana Nyad, a women’s leadership lunch, discussions on talent, the Target Markets’ new Program Business Professional designation and, of course, ample opportunities for networking.

The Target Markets’ hustle – on display from start to finish – also demonstrated the power and innovation of an insurance industry in growth mode. Seizing opportunities. Strengthening relationships. Getting business done.

Through all of this, I found myself among old friends I haven’t seen in years while sharing coffee and meals with new friends, potential business partners and – in my world – the all-important insurance industry trade media who were there to get the inside scoop on the issues, trends and insights of those who drive the business of insurance.

I applaud the team at Target Markets for putting together a productive event, and for those who grabbed the opportunity to move their business, and the industry, further into the future.

Jargon Madness Wrap Up: Top Overused Business Jargon and How to Block It Out

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Well, once again to the dismay of my three teenage sons, I won the family March Madness NCAA basketball bracket. We’ll just say I do not follow college basketball like they do, but please know that I didn’t pick solely on uniform colors or schools I’ve visited.

One topic I do have a better handle on than my boys is business jargon. This year, Kimball Hughes Public Relations thought it might be fun to explore some of the more over-used business jargon and build a bracket of sorts in the spirit of March Madness. The former journalists and word wizards on our team sure had fun with it.  Afterall, as professional communicators, these are words we’d like to see used minimally, if not completely boxed out from content.

Confusing the Point

According to the Harvard Business Review, jargon exists in workplaces because it can reinforce a shared identity, assist in fast and accurate communications among particular groups, as well as to quench an individual’s desire for professional status.

Prospects and clients want to understand what your company does. They do not want to be frustrated by jargon and buzz words strung together. Afterall, doesn’t your company do more than create integrated solutions that optimize efficiencies, drive alignment and build synergies with an omnichannel approach, all while connecting with ecosystems that align with core competencies?

Placing phrases on an About Us page, on a press release or in another piece of content peppered with heavy jargon could lead the client or prospect to leave the page out of frustration, misunderstand your products and services or decide to completely disengage with your company.

Geoff Keast, VP of Sales and INSTANDA, raised an interesting point in a recent interview on insurance jargon with PropertyCasualty360. He noted that when agents or insurers use jargon, the average insurance policyholder does not understand, they run the danger of leaving clients and prospects feeling as though they are being deliberately tricked. In other words, the overuse of jargon can lead to distrust.

Further, Keast noted that in the world of insurance, certain jargon could be doing the industry a disservice. For example, he pointed out that the often-used insurance term “premium” could leave one to interpret that they’ll be paying a higher-than-normal price for the product or services, when a premium in insurance is simply an insurance payment.

Writing Slam Dunk Messaging

At Kimball Hughes PR, our final four business jargon terms included core competency, integrated solutions, North Star and synergy, with my vote to position integrated solutions atop that list.  The term integrated solutions can certainly sound impressive, but if the content doesn’t explain the type of solutions a company provides and how they can benefit me or my business, what value do those business buzz words really hold?

Other words that made our list are terms we all easily recognize including: alignment, bandwidth, ecosystem, efficiencies, engagement, KPI, leverage, omni channel, psychographics, optimize, scale and viral.

Don’t get me wrong, these terms are essential for business communications. We simply used this amusing exercise to have a little fun and point out this fact: allowing your messaging to get lost in jargon can lead to an airball for your team, missing your key target audience.

Business jargon can and should be used in business communications, but it should not be your only play. For a winning communications strategy, consider:

  • Reviewing your copy for jargon and ensuring that what you are trying to say can be clearly understood by any member of your target audience.
  • Rereading any jargon to ensure it will not mislead readers or be misinterpreted.
  • Sharing the copy with an outsider and asking them to explain what is written.
  • Flagging identified overuse of jargon and exploring alternative ways to convey the same thought. (Finding fresh ways to explain what you do or to share key messages can help set you apart from the competition.)
  • Defining jargon terms that could confuse readers upon first reference on the word.

Finally, to ensure your communication fits your audience and conveys your key messages clearly and accurately, consider talking to a communications specialist or engaging a PR agency – preferably one staffed by former journalists or a proven team of writers. Good communicators will find the right words to tell your story in a way that resonates with your audience and delivers results.

Understanding the Medium: Tips for Navigating the Changes to Social Media

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No matter where you turn, social media issues are in the headlines.

Just recently, former President Trump’s Truth Social platform had its IPO, legislation to ban TikTok in the United States has stalled in the Senate, and the Supreme Court has expressed concerns related to free speech and state-level social media legislation. On the consumer side, according to TechCrunch, in 2022, TikTok’s monthly active users grew an average of 12% year-over-year per quarter, but this figure fell to 3% year-over-year per quarter in 2023.” Setting aside the politics and social concerns related to these headlines, the social media landscape is actively changing, and businesses will need to reassess how they utilize social media.

Understanding how the social media landscape is changing will require individual users and businesses alike to acknowledge the changes already been made. We are well past the days of Facebook’s monopoly on the social media market, and even traditional influencer relationships have changed with the growth of platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Now, businesses and users are seeing signs that these platforms are under attack, and some are asking if they will go the same route as Vine in 2017, when it was bought by Twitter (now X), and essentially shut down. Looking to the future, there are a few things that social media users of all levels should keep in mind.

Short-form content will remain dominant

While platforms are changing, the content has followed a similar trend — users want short, easy-to-digest content they can share and react to in a streamlined way. This means that even if TikTok is banned in the U.S., or bought by a different owner, other contenders will jump into the vacuum left in TikTok’s wake. Channels like Instagram and X continue to invest in video content, and that content will continue to be short as each brand’s content feeds continue to compete for attention.

Strategy is a must have

When choosing what platform to use, it’s important to consider how consumers interact with it, and how those audiences will then share and consume future content. Is a user looking to reach local business owners or C-level executives? For the former, community platforms like Facebook may still have a place in strategy, while the latter is more likely to capture engagement on LinkedIn. Understanding audiences and their media consumption habits will help users create a sustainable, long-term plan for engagement that makes a difference, despite ongoing changes or regulatory considerations. Reference the Twitter/X evolution as an example of how not thinking through these strategies can impact your long-term social media plans.

Names fade, but content remains king

Like many businesses, the names and identities of those at the top of the industry can change quickly. Facebook knocked Myspace off its throne at the onset of modern social media, and X has taken leaps away from the identity and goals it had as Twitter. While the names on the door may change, the user’s need to engage with relevant content remains constant. Now, as new platforms rise and identities change again, users are looking for the next big thing. While we don’t know what social media’s next big players might be, we can be sure there will be an emphasis on content that can be easily consumed, shared and analyzed.

As the role of social media in shaping politics and opinions has rapidly grown, businesses and individual users should pay attention to how the platforms are changing and being regulated. While it is impossible to predict every change that may come to a platform, social media users can be prepared by having a strategy and recognizing the kinds of quality content that remain popular on a given platform. By developing and sharing good content, users will remain at the top of social media home pages, regardless any changes to the platforms.

Luck or Skill? The Art of Landing a Quality Media Placement

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As we revel in the “Luck of the Irish” this St. Patrick’s Day, we thought we would look at how to get lucky with public relations.

Contrary to some thinking, luck has little to do with landing a good media placement. In fact, a reporter’s connections with journalists is barely a factor. While relationships can be part of getting the right journalist connected with that pot-of-gold placement, its only one of the many components that go into a successful PR campaign. 

Unlike that pesky little leprechaun of General Mill’s fame, we’re willing to share the lucky charms we employ to land a good PR placement.

A Recipe for Success

The first step toward a public relations win is twofold: Identifying your key messages and understanding your target audience.

If your key messages double as marketing or sales copy, your luck has run out right from the start. In this world of smaller newsrooms and overworked journalists, language that even hints at self-promoting messaging will be ignored almost immediately. Today’s media climate requires brands to build authentic messaging that informs, educates or solves a significant problem of the outlet’s audiences.

Every company has a product or service to sell. Every nonprofit or charitable organization has a mission to promote. The question is, what does the target audience need? In most cases, it isn’t a sales pitch or information about a product or service that will save them time, money or convenience. Rather, messaging needs to work backward from the audience’s need, educating them on the situation and options, and positioning the brand or nonprofit as a reliable resource. Once you understand your target audiences, you can refine your message to attract the interests of journalists courting those audiences.

Another important component where most brands and organizations come up short is credibility. Public relations is not marketing if only because it is not — and should not be — about sales of products or services. Confusing the two is about as unlucky a step as one can take in business.

We hear from companies all the time that want to issue press releases about a fundraiser or new product or service. If these companies have done the work of building credibility, there are opportunities to be had. That hard work includes making executives available for commentary on industry trends and issues. It includes demonstrating industry knowledge and insight on matters that have nothing to do with the brand or organization’s products or services.

Credibility is built on being responsive and helpful to journalists who reach out seeking quotes, background and general information. This means fostering and maintaining a relationship with the outlets that matter most. Absent these things, a press release from an organization that is not engaged with the outlets and journalists covering that sector of the economy are of little interest to those media professionals. This is the number one reason why one-offs or project work often proves to be difficult.

You can’t buy your way into the Wall Street Journal’s news coverage. However, you can pay for a comprehensive public relations campaign that positions you as a thought leader in your space by showcasing your insights, commentary on industry trends, sharing of best practices and reacting to news of the day. This requires a steady stream of diverse content — owned and earned — across multiple channels to establish credibility and raise your profile as a go-to source for media covering your space. Consistent messaging and a consistent industry presence demonstrate credibility and brand commitment.

Additional Tactics for Good Luck

  • Thought leadership, the sharing of innovative ideas, insights and opinions — in the form of contributed content, owned content or in-depth media interviews — not only build relationships with media, but they demonstrate that vital credibility media needs to validate you as a source. Contributing to the discourse of your industry or field in this way often results in third-party endorsement by media (because they publish you as a reliable source) that provides reputational fuel, and a bit of luck, for your brand.
  • Newsjacking provides time-sensitive opportunities to help journalists understand or contextualize breaking news or emerging trends, often in the wake of actions taken by others. This type of media engagement helps determine the next phase of the story and, when done correctly, positions your organization as a trusted source.
  • Social Media has ebbed and flowed in terms of influence, and some channels are better suited than others to reach certain audiences or carry certain types of messaging. For business professionals and B2B industries, we continue to find value in LinkedIn. Between LinkedIn’s newsletters, live events, self-published articles and regular engagement by and with executives, LinkedIn consistently proves to be a powerful tool to reach key target audiences as well as media professionals searching for and vetting industry sources. Social media continues to be the investment some organizations are reluctant to make but would be lucky to have supporting their mission.

A Lucky Match

Finally, finding the right public relations agency for your business is less about luck than it is judgement. In fact, here’s a little secret: most PR agencies do most of the same things, with the same tools and connect with the same journalists. While many will point to a raft of key differentiators, from our perspective it comes down to one big one: matching personalities.

Public relations is, after all, a relationship-building business. While many of us trained the same way, have similar experiences and employ a range of not-too-dissimilar tactics to achieve our own lucky placements, it comes down to asking with whom you would prefer to work. Do personalities align or clash? Do you truly achieve a meeting of minds in that first meeting or is the pitch for the work simply pandering to your ego? Do you want to be surrounded by those who simply agree with you to please you, or do you want the expertise and insight you will pay for to be offered constructively, candidly and all to serve your best reputational interests? If things go wrong, is the PR pro or team you are considering the same individual or team you want standing by your side to fix it? Has the PR team pitching you on their abilities earned your respect and proven their value?

We advise prospective clients to understand all PR agencies offer similar approaches and resources. Some have deep industry specialties while others are generalists. What should matter in a lucky public relations partnership is the professionals doing the work, their knowledge and understanding of your industry, their track record, their ability to write well, their creativity, trustworthiness and their respect for your organization and its reputation.

Maybe there is a little luck in finding the right PR partnership, but the work itself has nothing to do with luck. It’s about tenacity, credibility, creativity and knowledge. If you find that in your public relations strategy as well as your PR partner, well, that truly is a lucky combination.