Digital PR in action – Fuel goes VIRAL!
Dicken’s told us almost 200 years ago that “Ill news travels fast”…
This age-old adage, the lynchpin of Public Relations (PR), follows us all throughout our lives – becoming all-too-apparent when the latest little tidbit of our personal business seems to suddenly become common knowledge! But thankfully, it’s not just the bad news that tends to flash across media outlets like a lightning bolt, these days – and a prime example of digital PR in action was illustrated starkly for us just a couple of weeks ago, when a press release detailing our implementation of a 4 day work week trial, sent to local media, suddenly saw our inboxes and phones lighting up…
It turns out that the face of our Managing Director, Martyn King, along with his detailing of what the trial involved in our own digital PR article, had been picked up by national news outlets – which saw him gracing the screens of millions in a matter of minutes following the release of the article to Plymouth-based outlets. The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Mirror, Yahoo! and Metro were just a handful of national outlets that picked up the story, much to the amusement and bemusement of the original source!
Martyn commented on the day:
“The interesting thing here is that we’re one of thousands of companies that are running a 4-day work week trial, yet these outlets all jumped on our story and placed it on their homepages! We did our own piece of digital PR work around it – through a blog article and organic social media – but it turns out that the interest in it was far beyond what we originally envisaged”
Despite the apparent surprise, it was no real shock that the old Fleet Street establishments had latched onto and ran with the story. Given the years of experience in the team with both digital PR and traditional print media, Martyn and Fuel’s Business Development Director, Steve Gyseman, will have had it in their minds that the story had the potential to spread. The reach of media outlet networks is vast – and space on their webpages needs filling to ensure that the clicks and ad revenue keeps rolling in. Couple this with the ‘news-of-the-day’ centring around the cost of living crisis, and the gloom of the current economic climate that we all face, then a ‘good-news’ story around a company thriving and implementing forward-thinking schemes in the name of staff-wellbeing and growth, is bound to have been a keen hook.
This was a wholly positive digital PR experience for us, with a tide of good-will coming in both directly to Martyn and into the office from many sources. Furthermore, traffic to our new website on the day the article released spiked by a whopping 706% from the day previous. However, there is a clear indication here that from the tiniest spark, a smouldering trail can begin and precipitate into a blazing inferno before you’re even aware of that initial scintilla. This is where digital PR crisis and reputation management, as well as years of experience of how the media works, lives and breathes has us as an organisation well-prepared and placed to deal with any digital PR and public relations issues which arise.
With this in mind, and with a case study here in point, our experienced team are ready and waiting to assist you with any digital PR and public relations-related queries that you may have. Whether it’s a pertinent issue, or for a future public relations campaign to build your brand’s awareness, we will work alongside you to create, maintain and share a brand identity that keeps audiences engaged, responds to the changing climate and ensures that all of your outputs have digital PR and public relations at the forefront of thinking.
So, with yet more Dickensian direction: “never do tomorrow what you can do today” – Get in touch now to see how we can propel your news story or your brand into the hands and eyes of millions through the application of effective digital PR and traditional public relations strategies.
