As a brand leader in 2020, if you’re not actively looking to get mentioned in media outlets, you’re not doing enough. And the reason is simple: brands can’t afford anonymity anymore.
According to recent studies, the sanitary measures and the shift in the market proposal “have pushed 30.7 million small businesses” – making up 99.9% of the U.S. corporate environment – towards a structure, competition, and supply crisis.
In today’s article, we’ll dab into Media Coverage’s top keys on formulating topics to make yourself visible to audiences and Bloomberg. These were summarized by considering all the rising entrepreneurs trying to increase their engagement and Earned Media rates.
Let’s get started.
The road towards ecosystem businesses
For the last five years, it hasn’t been a secret how the connection a company is supposed to maintain with its potential customers — involving one-on-one communication, trust, and loyalty — is built on interactions. That said, in our current times, B2C (Business To Client) exchanges consist of much more than just listening to users and alternating information and opinions.
Let me put it this way: Yes, a corporate narrative is going to be considered exciting or not depending on the perspective of target audiences; yet there’s still one significant component every company should get a hold on, and that is the continuous flow of data displayed from their own digital spaces employing a reliable media strategy.
Have you ever wondered where Bloomberg’s journalists come up with all these exciting stories starring brands, companies, and entrepreneurs through a provocative lens?
That’s because P.R. pros have taken every shoutout, link, and reaction and transformed them into additional valuable content telling a compelling story capable of drawing the attention of Bloomberg’s collaborators. This formula has been a hit with readers and brand momentum.
A reliable media plan should follow five key goals:
- Position your brand on top of Google’s search results.
- Include the offer in the users’ routine of consumption.
- Stand out from the competition.
- Obtain the support of authority characters and platforms (Bloomberg).
- Create a community interested in product or service launches and boost overall sales.
Considering the above elements, what can be done to drive honest conversations toward Bloomberg’s domain?
Putting the users as the priority
Since the largest bridge of continuous exchange relies on social media, most brands limit themselves to performing actions from their profiles, hoping to “get a feature someday.”
Instead, to get mentioned (especially when it comes to Bloomberg’s incredibly high standards coming from 1981) means seeking for the public or followers to react towards relevant or valuable information while genuinely connecting with the brand — generating their takes and contributions from it.
As I suggested at the beginning of the article, the world is facing a digital information blitz where big corporations have the advantage since they can afford to pay for visibility.
According to figures collected by Statista, at least 3.5 billion users are on all social networks, making up 45% of the world’s population.
In this case, if yours is a company on the rise, betting your entire offer only in communities like Instagram or Facebook with a Bloomberg tag without having a large budget to back it up will only result in a small percentage of the audience feeling motivated to interact and mention and no foremost journalist paying attention.
Social media (the quintessential station to use) has recently increased its bounce rate toward supported editorial sites.
Alternatively, what you need is to make your main channels (i.e., website or blog) much more accessible from search engines so you’ll be able to build up an expert profile that the outlet’s collaborators will positively receive. In the words of M. Scott Havens (global head of digital for Bloomberg Media), P.R. and marketing strategies focus on “the direct traffic to homepages. ”
The self-proclaimed “business and financial information news leader” holds a clientele of more than 300.000 around the world. Hence, you need to generate content with their buyer persona and a specific site section in mind.
An ideal target includes users looking for solutions like yours (among other interests). Consequently, driving an interesting dialogue involves:
- Using popular keywords suiting the niche: The primary source for Web traffic is Google searches. That being the case, knowing which are the most popular keywords will allow you to identify the most common demands and doubts surrounding Bloomberg’s visits to associate your brand with. You can use our Keyword Suggestion Tool for this task.
- Generating exposure from reputable sites: Your leading site is the epicenter where users can obtain all the information and purchasing possibilities. Still, it’s good to collaborate with similar blogs and expert platforms that already bring together a good portion of your potential clientele. As a result, your company will gain their trust faster and journalists’ too.
- Analyzing the performance of the competition: It is crucial to understand the growth of rival brands. By doing that, you and your team will discern what strategies they are using (and not applying), target the audience, and perceive that blind spots are being left aside.
As you can see, applying this scheme results in attending to different contents, channeling the conversation, and inserting yourself in the digital sphere. Well, we already talked about the approach meant for potential customers.
Now, what do you do if Bloomberg ignores it?
How to finally get mentioned on Bloomberg
It is of vital interest for a startup, medium-sized company, or future consortium also to be attractive to the eyes of the media in general. Nevertheless, Bloomberg is the original trend and opinion setter for most markets.
Fortunately, nowadays, a single article or reach-out can spark a new conversation topic and define your company’s fate. Ergo, neutral media coverage proposes both positive and negative, as recently happened with SpaceX surrounding the Texas scandal.
Under those circumstances, the focus is on getting the right people to notice your offer and perceive it on good terms according to the following rules:
- Approaching a close cause for the population
People who follow outlets like Bloomberg do so because they always talk about issues directly affecting their daily routine and don’t have an advertising-oriented point of discussion. Ergo, all the value generated is based on emotionality (i.e., “The first commercial flight to the Moon.”
If you wonder how to match your company with a socially-impactful cause, consider its main potential. If yours is a technological solution, it indeed represents a significant advance for a specific community.
It should be noted that promoting your company as a newsworthy advance does not excuse using formal or rigid setups. Preferably, create content using the first-person tactic, mirroring the approach of Bloomberg’s Businessweek. This will make it very convenient for the medium to translate into a press article, pushing clicks, share rates on social media, and conversation among users.
- Set the record straight on its quality.
Rule out basic institutionality. It gets boring quickly and also creates a barrier for readers and Bloomberg. How unfair would it be for journalists and experts to navigate the waters of advertising and junk content to find a wall in the worst style of conventional commerce?
Thus, promote the advantages of your offer creatively. A great way to do this is to leave room for questions. This has several purposes: as a market study and as encouraging two-way communications with receivers in the press.
- Engage as a spokesperson.
Once again, we all know who Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates is. That’s because the most successful and long-lived companies have managed to get mentioned on places like Bloomberg or even appeared on the main page with one leader or spokespersons as a direct link.
But wait, there’s a reason for it.
As a CEO or representative, you are the one who can do interviews and portray the aspirations and goals behind the solution. Also, readers who follow large media outlets like to keep track of the characters, characteristics, and values in stories.
Yes, this can also give rise to complaints and less pleasant issues to handle, but it is positive since the community gets to feel identified with a company’s voice. Meanwhile, the media receives headlines and more visitors.
Stop thinking of your brand as a part of “industries of the future” but of the present. And if you want to create interest, make sure to work not only on the digital spaces of your brand but also yours as an individual.
Be open to getting approached through Twitter or Linkedin, for example; that makes it easier to follow tags and search indexes to respond timely and justify a feature in large media — which brings us to the next point.
Take the mention to the next level.
The next step for pushing an offer into making its way toward Bloomberg (or flat-out increasing your exposure via sending an article as a contributor) is to present it as the most significant thing in the niche. Let me explain this:
You will obtain much more revenue if your company doesn’t come off as just another “follower” of the events but the pioneer.
I know that constantly glimpsing words like guru and influencer can be tiring. However, by doing it correctly, the brand can become an aspirational instance that pays dividends in earned media coverage. Get recognized as a category leader by applying the following principles:
- Be the best, and look like it: If companies like Apple know anything, they don’t have to be the first in an area (technically speaking) to be perceived as one.
- Inform and educate: Bloomberg’s staff has proven from time to time they have an expert eye for identifying when businesses are taking a problem and giving it a unique perspective by granting product development resources (adding the Public Relations component).
- Boost the relatability: A solid content campaign can make a label synonymous with a specific solution. This is why today we talk about Zoom meetings and not videoconferences. Take the time to build your own “throne.”
We can conclude these three points with a single focus: innovation as an intrinsic journalistic interest. It brings an extra touch to this take through a choice of correct and timely topics.
Publication calendars are popular today, as they give marketers access to a broader view of the business. Use them to anticipate important dates or consumption spikes, even if your brand hasn’t become a star yet.
Let’s dig into this matter.
Follow up on issues
Not all topics have the potential to produce the same interest in Bloomberg’s communicators, nor do they perform the same with Google’s algorithms. There will always be a variation between shares, likes, comments, and contacts by the media.
Therefore, start analyzing them to allow a better performance and adjust or discontinue the content campaigns that do not convey definitive results.
Such feedback is essential if you plan to get mentioned on Bloomberg’s page or social media profile and stay relevant in the market since even the innovation card expires.
Where to obtain these metrics? Using specialized programs in the competitive benchmark, such as:
- BuzzSumo: With this, you can quickly discover the most outstanding players in the influence networks and convenient means for your brand.
- SEO book: Designed for SEO professionals, it lets you keep track of long-tail words best positioned in the search results.
- Paper Rater: You have seen this tool in a YouTube ad. It is excellent for classifying how natural your writing is or whether the content violates any rules of plagiarism or not.
- Google Analytics: This follows the entire navigation path users are taking while looking for a solution related to yours.
I could mention many more alternatives. Unfortunately, you must pay the service monthly to get the most out of these tools; limiting the KPIs utilized can save a lot of money.
What should interest you most is for these tools to measure in real-time the number of subscribers to your owned media (blog, newsletter, and social media), the level of traffic toward your website, the number of external links, and the most used terms to get to the main page.
Now, reach out to Bloomberg News with a great pitch at [email protected] – if your story and online presence are set in the U.S. – or look at the official list for submitting press releases.
Conclusion
After analyzing all the previous points, you will already understand what it means to start the journey, draw users’ attention, and generate more conversation. Therefore, it would only remain to optimize a P.R. strategy.
I hope you liked this article! Feel free to look at the rest of our posts, where we discuss in-depth the marketing and advertising trends that every company with a robust digital footprint should know.
Tell us: what tools mentioned today are you using to add interest to the brand’s narrative? As we already mentioned, you can choose those that best fit the approach of an independent entrepreneur. However, keep in mind that these require lots of time and effort.
On the other hand, I consider it very worthwhile to rely on a professional team. Try betting on a service based on guarantees, as is ours in Media Coverage. We can handle everything related to content creation, media planning, and connecting with Bloomberg’s team.
