With the ever-changing communication environment, news doesn’t stay around for long. Broadcast media is a blitz of information for its audience. Now with its online counterparts, print media changes faster than one can take a breath. So how does a company leverage its earned media coverage?

Third-party credibility is a crucial vehicle for telling your story and requires companies to use additional means to communicate its ambassador’s expertise to its direct target audience (clients, prospects and constituents). In order to do this effectively, the company’s website must have the necessary tools. A news section that contains links to publications and new station websites allows viewers to read the article or story in its entirety.

Now take the next step. Build an e-blast in HTML that contains elements of your company’s brand. Pull a few key messages from the article or story that you want to convey and visually display them. Between the e-mail header and the visual of the e-blast itself, your company has already made an impression of what it’s all about. As prospects and constituents open this e-mail, they can immediately get a quick glimpse of the message and click on a hyperlink which takes them to your company’s website where the full article sits. With less than three clicks of a mouse, a person has learned a number of things about your company.

A fully optimized website will also help increase your company’s status through search engines when your target audience is looking for certain items. Since you’ve taken the time to link to the full stories or articles within the publication or broadcast, website searches will now be more viable for your company.

Earned media coverage should typically stay up-to-date on your website but can be backlogged for one calendar. After that it has less impact. Unless some of these news items are marquee projects that provide a testament to the underlying mission of your company, take a moment to remove the old as you promote the new.

Using these tools to better tell your company’s story will allow your target audience to read about your latest projects and expertise as well as increasing your company’s Web presence. This means more unique visitors to your site - more opportunity to engage your audience.