This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.
Op-eds are a valuable part of public relations and media relations strategies because of the media coverage and the positive positioning, through thought leadership, they generate. An additional, and extremely valuable, characteristic of the op-ed is that its topic, and the content that is generated as part the op-ed scoping process, can also be used to generate more than a single media placement.
The thought leadership and op-ed (opinion piece) scoping process will always generate more information than can be contained within a single opinion piece. Two things can occur with this information:
- It can serve as the basis for another opinion piece
- It can be used as complementary information to support an issues-based campaign, aimed at generating multiple media placements, that ‘feeds’ off the initial single opinion piece placement and uses core information from that op-ed.
Aspects to bear in mind for op-eds include:
- Giving the op-ed exclusively to one outlet means they should be, strategically, the most appropriate media outlet to target
- When it comes to mainstream media, you will only be able to place the op-ed in one outlet. That’s it. The exception being if one media organisation owns a variety of media outlets of relatively state-specific nature
- The timing/coordination of how the campaign is rolled out is important - the op-ed and an issues-based campaign (based on complementary thought leadership content) need to work in concert with each other
Leveraging the thought leadership
Another dimension of these approaches is that once you have confirmed an op-ed is being placed in a print or online media outlet (mostly relevant to mainstream metro media like The Australian), you can use the content to pitch to radio or even TV. You can do this the day before the story goes live or you can do it early in the morning of publication.
Radio producers always skim the newspapers (and their online variations these days) to see if there is anything they can explore further on their shows. This can be leveraged for the benefit of everyone : client/employer, the media.
PR people? We make everyone happy!
So, what are your thoughts on information in this post? Have you applied any of these approaches? How did they go? What have I missed out on that is crucial in undertaking these approaches?
