By Andrew Blum*
The holidays aren’t only about Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. It’s also the time of year to be prepared for when the press come calling for their annual year end stories.
Face it, we as a society and in the media are anniversary happy – and this also goes into annual year end stories.
Instead of reinventing the PR wheel in December, start getting data, narrative, video and infographics into the hopper in October and November so you can get that big media play in December.
Being first with a list of trends in any industry at year-end can yield significant PR exposure in the trade, business and consumer media for your company or your client’s experts.
Think of David Letterman’s Top 10 list – in a serious way. What were your top deals, top hires, top accomplishments, earnings, and so forth? And what trends are your experts seeing as we look to the new year?
One way to keep current on all of this is to have a running tally and also to save and organize your clip e-books throughout the year. On the video side of things, use a service like Critical Mention to catalog video clips.
Once you’ve gotten your year enders ready, it gives you a good jump for the new PR year and you can start the whole process all over again.
*Andrew Blum is a PR consultant and media trainer and principal of AJB Communications. He has directed PR for professional services and financial services firms, NGOs, agencies and other clients. As a PR executive, and formerly as a journalist, he has been involved on both sides of the media aisle in some of the most media intensive crises of the past 25 years. Contact him at ablum@ajbcomms.com or follow him on Twitter: @ajbcomms
