When people think of Public Relations (PR), they usually think of making large M&A announcements splashed across the front page or a grand product launch event that is the talk of town. However, that kind of publicity doesn't happen every day or every month or even every year - what do companies do in between to keep in the public eye?

TL:DR

1. Social Media

2. Thought Leadership

3. Product or Service Feature

4. User Generated Content

The easiest one is through Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn et al. These channels allow your brand to shine on a regular basis by showing interesting internal or sharing external content. In between major announcements, your consumers/customers visit these properties to continue interacting with your brand. In fact, social media can do even more - prominent posts could even generate news of its own.

After the faux pas of the Tesla Cybertruck's unveiling where its "shatterproof" windows were shattered during the demonstration, Lego jumped on the social media ridicule bandwagon with:

While making a joke on Tesla's expense, the humour also reinforced the relatable aspects of Lego among its fans (the pain of stepping on an indestructible Lego piece). The post went viral and was reported in various news media outlets.

Next up is creating Thought Leadership. This can come in various ways but it essentially means getting your spokesperson to be recognised within your industry as an expert on a certain topic.

To start, you can write and submit guest posts / opinion editorials to media outlets that accept them. There are many ways to determine what is the right content to write - one trick is to write something contrarian but yet can be back up by facts - after all, we all fall for clickbait like "Is digital transformation increasing executive isolation?" once in a while.

After getting a few of these published and getting some recognition for sharing insightful viewpoints, you can move on to getting featured on-air or live. It is a bit more work but you can prepare for these live panel / sole interviews on TV or radio. It could also be the same at industry conferences.

Besides getting your personnel featured, there is always the Product or Service Feature. This involves finding editors / journalists of a relevant beat to try out your product or service. NOTE: This is different from a paid sponsorship - this is getting real interest from the media outlet to feature your business for their readers' benefit.

One way to get a good feature is during holidays - we've all seen listicles documenting 10 best X for X season. This requires your product/service be unique and eye-catching. Here's an example about Smart Gadgets and Home Appliances

Final one to consider is User Generated Content.

85% of the user are found to be more influenced by the UGC than the content made by the brands directly – Adweek

Essentially, you entice your audience to create content (pictures, videos, memes, etc) to be shared on their social network and tag you in it. It could be a competition or a survey or anything at all.

Take for example, the "Share A Coke" campaign by Coca-Cola. This idea first started in Australia in 2011, where Coke decided to print about 150 most common and popular names on its bottles asking people to ‘share a coke' with their loved ones.

The campaign was run in rotation on different countries based on the culture, custom and background of each of those countries. And this idea was welcomed with open arms and people profusely started sharing photos with the bottles on social media and the ‘share a coke' campaign became an instant hit. Not just in Australia but around the globe in over 80 countries later on.

So while you wait for your next big announcement, you know that there is plenty of work that can be done to keep up your brand's awareness. Do this and you can add new meaning to the old adage, "No News Is Good News".