Repurpose Stories To Extend Shelf Life

Rob LynchUncategorized

You secured a great story in an outlet your target customer reads. Awesome! After high-fiving everyone in the office, fielding a couple calls from potential customers that read the story, you head out for celebratory drinks.

A week later, it’s crickets. The glow of the story is gone.

I belong to an indie PR facebook group and a fellow freelancer posted the following question yesterday:

“I had a client ask me how we can extend the “shelf life” of a placement (story) so to speak. He said, ‘We’ve been getting great coverage, but after a few days, the buzz around each hit (story) dies. How do we make it last longer?’

It’s a question that comes up quite a bit. How do you repurpose the story after you secure it? What you do with the story after it runs is almost as much as the story itself. Here’s some tips:

  • Social media – Post to your facebook page, twitter feed, tumblr, pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. and encourage your followers to read, comment and share.
  • Newsletter – if you have a newsletter, include a news section with the clips. Thank your customers, investors, employees, etc. for their support in making stories like these possible.
  • Reception Area TV – Have your art department of a friend versed in Photoshop capture images of the clips (because pictures generate more interest and attention that just text) and scroll them in your office so that potential customers, partners, employees, investors, etc. see them.
  • Reprints – Secure hard copy reprints and encourage sales to distribute with proposals and use them for tradeshow collateral.

And this is just a start. There’s tons of ways you can repurpose a story.

What’s worked for you? How do you extend the shelf life of the stories you secure?