The industry media is looking for news – your news.
Are you giving yourself the best opportunity to get some print space?
Where do you start?
Our clients have the benefit of Construct Marketing being a coach (Our clients might say a pain in the neck!) in that we regularly bug our clients for releasable news, looking for content to amplify, and creating opportunities to grab print space in the industry media. Relationships with trade media contacts also helps.
Example – direct from an industry magazine editor’s e-mail …
“Do you think there would be support for using that Lansing, MI job as the basis for an article?”
“Hell yeah”, says I. (Client doesn’t know it yet, but, “Hell yeah.”)
We then look to a project manager, superintendent, principal, (or a combination of the aforementioned) to help build the article. Some input from the geotechnical engineer would be valuable as well, not to mention suppliers, equipment manufacturers, et al. (Some projects have sensitivities that don’t lend themselves to publication, but this isn’t about those.)
The Editors of PDCA’s Piledriver, DFI’s Deep Foundations, ADSC’s Foundations Drilling, and any number of construction industry titles, are dying for an article. (Read: Free Press – better than advertising.) All we have to do is take advantage. I understand that some projects lend themselves to job stories more than others, but DANG it’s good press when it does, and apart from the magazine space, it also benefits: Social Media, Website, etc. and often is a nice compliment to a project well-done.
The client says, “GO”
Whatever it takes. Seriously. At Construct Marketing we can draft an article after a brief phone call. Multiple phone calls and we’ll have photos, quotes, details, revisions, etc. – a better project story.
Three Tools are also available to “Make it happen”. Our Content Builder Tool is a form to extract the basic info from a Deep Foundations/Geotechnical/Structural Project so we can build and expand on the fundamentals. After filling out the form the submitter gets the questions and responses. Construct marketing does too. From there, we’re all not working from a blank page, and have something to build a draft with. Don’t like the online form? Construct has a blank PDF form with the questions that you can fill out and send around. Another tool is the Construct Marketing Content Line. Clients can call this dedicated voicemail line and dictate project information, stories, details. We take it from there. Again, we’re not working from a blank page, and have something to build on.
Once we’ve crafted our final draft, our relationships with the publishers of the construction industry media are a great value to get clients into the best placement.
Get the most mileage out of a story
Once the project story is completed and has the support it needs (photos, quotes, details) the story can go anywhere. Get more mileage out of the project story by using in social media, on your website (absolutely), handouts for conferences and tradeshow exhibits (some publishers offer reprints of an article with magazine masthead and cover photo from the job). Some job stories lend themselves into expansion into case histories – possibly for presentation at construction industry conferences, seminars, events.
Not to mention ready examples of the work you do, ready to link to, or find online, when the potential clients looking for those capabilities go searching.