Today more than ever, positive media coverage can help your business enhance credibility, strengthen relationships with customers, investors, and others key stakeholders, and boost your bottom line. When the news media report positively on your business, that’s an endorsement that offers more credibility than the typical advertisement.

Following are five tips to keep your brand front and center in news media:

1. Identify the major media sources in your market sector—print, broadcast and online—and read and study their content. Understand what type of news, topics and trends resonates with their readers. Friend and follow them on social media
2. Organize your list of media contacts into a CRM tool or spreadsheet format, complete with email, phone number, deadlines, social channels, etc. Take the time to understand how to best reach your targeted journalists
3. Create a concise and compelling email pitch with a relevant product, service, employee or company story. Clearly state why this would be important to the publication’s audience
4. Regularly follow industry news and determine how your story pitch is pertinent to trending topics
5. Nothing beats picking up the phone and politely following up on your pitch. Without being overly aggressive, seek to establish a relationship with the journalists you’re trying to reach

Marx Layne is a full-service public relations and digital media agency in daily contact with print, broadcast, online and trade media locally and nationwide. As a result, our professionals are skilled at positioning our broad range of clients before targeted news media.