Press coverage is a competitive business in tech PR

Kewal By Kewal

Coverage cupWe all know how tough the current media landscape is, but when we are talking about competition we mean Friday afternoons at Spark.  Since the agency started we’ve awarded a highly prized cup (It’s only a small gold painted plastic thing) to the best piece of client coverage achieved that week.  Each week on the blog we are now going to share the previous week’s Coverage Cup nominations to highlight some of the great results we have achieved on behalf of our clients. Feel free to let us know your thoughts on the nominations through Twitter or the comments section of the blog.  

The nominations are generally made by team members and can be national or trade coverage.  It’s not just about circulation – we focus far more on the influence, impact and amount of work that has gone into pitching the story to the media.   We also consider the client’s response and how effectively their messages have been communicated.  Finally, when attempting to convert a nomination to a win, a wise nominee will outline how that coverage has been used by us or the client to drive conversations across social channels, the SEO value of the piece, as well as whether the piece has the potential to be used in broader sales and marketing activities. As you can imagine it can sometimes get a bit competitive in the office when it comes to choosing a weekly winner!

Exceeding expectations in terms of media results was Spark’s primary USP when the agency was founded many moons ago and the coverage cup means we’ve retained a (sometimes scarily obsessive) level of enthusiasm for securing coverage that isn’t just vanity publishing but has significant business value.  Finally, a reminder to clients – journalists don’t always publish backlinks so we can’t always track leads to your website but if you do get a lead as a result of a PR campaign we are always desperate to hear about it.  First because it is great to know how well PR is working and second because it always helps convert a Coverage Cup nomination into a win! 

Last week’s nominations included: