Public Relations

Content Value Exchange

Success in PR today would be unrecognizable to what worked even a decade ago. With more than 60 percent of reporters laid off in the past 10 years, it’s more difficult than ever to secure media coverage. And with more content at our fingertips every second, it’s a tall order to make that coverage stand out.

Effective modern PR requires trusted reporter and influencer relationships, an eye for a story, a knack for amplification and a lot of persistence. Bring it all together and you have a dynamic strategy that stands up to the communications challenges of the moment. We call it a “content value exchange” — and it’s all about creating a streamlined effort that champions story ideas reporters and influencers will find interesting and extends the life and usefulness of every story.

At the outset of any relationship, CSG works to calendarize and prioritize our PR consulting efforts to create the greatest possible impact from the jump. It starts with the creation and extraction of content and story ideas to be packaged into various forms, including pitches and bylines. With the insights captured and packaged, we turn to promotion, tapping media and influencer contacts — on the national, local and trade level — to get the message out to all of the right audiences and outlets.

Proactive vs. Reactive

There are two faces of pitching: a proactive effort that goes toward making or creating news, and a reactive effort that positions a brand as the go-to source for topics that will best achieve your business objectives.

Proactive: We work with you to establish your subject matter experts as go-to sources for the media whenever they’re working on stories that are relevant to your business objectives. We proactively ideate timely and relevant stories that will generate the most media traction and attention. In this process, we identify stories that hit your target markets regularly and use data research to make informed pitches and outreach. Additionally, we keep you apprised of upcoming media opportunities to ensure your spokespeople and subject matter experts are being offered as a source on relevant topics.

Reactive: We continuously monitor for news, media inquiries and other opportunities to reach out to the media, offering commentary that further solidifies your brand’s position as a thought leader.

Conferences

As part of our PR consulting services, we can also identify and secure speaking opportunities at key industry trade conferences and build a speaking opportunity proposal library to support that effort. CSG can also optimize the conference speaking opportunities by arranging influencer meetings and recording, transcribing and editing presentations for content creation, including articles, videos, bylines and pitches.

Coverage Optimization

Our work doesn’t stop when positive media coverage is secured — we maximize that coverage across your owned, shared and paid channels. A byline placement becomes a social post and the inspiration for a related blog post. An interview becomes a social media-ready clip and the basis of a speaking pitch. Every bit of coverage is a new opportunity to extend the story.

Measurement Matters

If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Only if you have the right set of tools and metrics to capture it.

Public relations has a longstanding reputation of providing lackluster performance metrics and struggling to attribute earned media activity against organizational goals. CSG decided to challenge that reputation and hold itself accountable for achieving business goals through strategic communications. Gone were the days of reporting total circulation or a website’s unique monthly visitors as “impressions” or applying an “earned media value” based on an arbitrary advertising formula. Instead, we tasked ourselves with thoughtful analysis that tells the story of what our PR consulting truly achieves.

With the emergence of industry tools, data and technology, we can measure and attribute the business ROI from all sides to better understand what strikes a chord. Our measurement approach includes:

• True reads and the demographic make-up of earned media readers
• Social shares and platform specific performance
• Referral traffic tracked on Google Analytics
• Transparent attribution from all online earned media

These data points and more are integrated into real-time interactive dashboards, providing streamlined data manipulation and robust insights to inform the ongoing communications strategy.