This is discussed in my latest Harvard Business Review piece from last week about three major public relations mistakes that most companies make, and in even more detail in my new book, Evangelist Marketing
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The most certain path I know to getting media coverage of whatever you want, whenever you want, is to have your company leaders build relationships with the media. Assign five to 10 key media relationships each to a number of your executives and have them spend two minutes per day managing them. Why? Because your executives know how to build relationships, and your media relations people usually do not. For reasons of age (generally very young), experience (usually very little), sophistication (typically not enough), and ingrained habits (bad press releases blasted impersonally to hundreds of media), your media relations professionals should not be put in a position to determine the coverage — and ensuing success or failure! — of your product, service and company. It isn’t fair to them, or to you.
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I am a marketing consultant with clients that include TiVo, Logitech, T-Mobile, Sprint, Yelp! and ZAGG. My new book, Evangelist Marketing, was published this month, and is 288 pages on topics like this one.