Questions Every Social Enterprise Should Ask When Embarking On A PR Campaign

Posted on by Katie Wagner

 

My team has had the pleasure of working with Chicago based social enterprise Bright Endeavors for several months as part of a larger partnership with REDF, a San Francisco based non-profit dedicated to investing in double bottomline enterprises. Bright Endeavors employs at-risk young moms in candle production and aims to break the cycle of poverty through job training.

Over the months, I’m proud to say we’ve successfully garnered a fantastic media mix of product reviews (Earth911, Inc.com, Business News Daily, ) and social good company profiles (Christian Science Monitor, Forbes, Unite:4Good) resulting in increased site traffic and sales. Because REDF has many non-profits which could benefit from Public Relations, our campaigns must wrap after several months’ time to spread the opportunity throughout the portfolio. Recently I received the following list of questions from Bright Endeavors’ Sales & Marketing Coordinate, Allie Sundet on how to best continue to leverage the momentum created by Remark. I’m sharing these here as I believe these are questions all social enterprises should be considering when looking towards towards a building or maintaining a PR campaign that is both effective and manageable.

  1. How does Remark determine the appropriate news outlet/type (blogger, influencer, online magazine, gift guides, etc.) to reach out to? About how many/week?

  2. How do you divide your time between reaching out to the various outlets, is more time spent on bloggers than another source, for example?

  3. What are some tips for building a media database?

  4. What tends to be an initial ‘pitch’ or ask? Do you have any tips for creating an engaging story that will hook the influencer/publication?

  5. How many times do you typically follow up after the initial pitch? Are product samples necessary for each outlet?

  6. What are some tips for creating a successful PR strategy?

  7. How do you measure success of this strategy?

  8. How much lead time do outlets typically need to ensure timely publication? For example, when is a good time to start pushing stories for the holidays?

      9. What are some strategy ideas around promoting our candle rental service in the spring/summer        months?