Maximizing a big announcement

Did you know that the dimensions of the header on a LinkedIn company profile are different than the ones on your personal profile? And different still from the dimensions of a header on a LinkedIn group?

Sounds trivial, but it’s not. Those are the details you confront when you fully maximize your opportunities to amplify any big announcements and good news you’re lucky enough to promote.

For example, instead of just pitching your news, you can enroll your employees, alumni, fans and other stakeholders to amplify the announcement on social media. And instead of just asking them to, you can create fun graphics or images they can use. And above and beyond that, you can create graphics they can use as their cover image (and as the cover image on all of the brand pages and groups you administer). Here’s an example:

OneTrust is a software company that landed at #1 on the Inc. 500 list in August. And their head of PR, Gabrielle Ferree, squeezed every ounce of juice out of that scintillating honor.

Last week she presented her campaign – how she facilitated the ranking, landed the cover story in the accompanying issue of the magazine, and amplified the news to all her key stakeholders – to my Inner Circle. She also shared the principles she learned as an Inner Circle member that helped propel the success.

My biggest takeaway from Gabrielle’s presentation was:

When you have good news to share, if your goal is to get earned media coverage, then that’s all you’re going to get. But if your goal is to propel your organization toward achieving its key objectives, then you’ll get those, too.

Gabrielle shared a downloadable checklist with more than 60 tactics her team chooses from for every announcement. And also the design specs for all the different social media platforms :).

She and her team wove those steps together into a tightly coordinated campaign that not only earned great coverage for their fast-growing company, but also drove attendance to a “what’s next” webinar that resulted in a meaningful number of software demos and sales opportunities.

How sweet it is when you can point not only to a magazine cover you landed, but to qualified sales leads (or donations or downloads or ticket sales or volunteers or whatever your particular metric may be) you are directly responsible for.

You can learn how to plan and execute campaigns like this in the Inner Circle. We’ll be closed to new members for a while, but when you sign up for our Wait List here you’ll get free training bonuses to tide you over while you decide whether to join.