3 Ways to Brave the Holidays in PR

By Noelle Murphy

As “they” say, winter is coming, and for PR that means you’re talking to the wind, the cold, lonely wind. Here’s a fun fact about the Red Branch PR department that might lift your spirits, it was built in December of 2015, which was the best time to build a PR department. Why?

My messaging was admittedly not its best quite yet BUT nobody looks at emails around the holidays…so I was off the hook. I had the time to craft better messages, more efficient campaigns and get my wits about me before everyone started working again in January.

This December, I realized instead of crying into my cocoa about my low open rates and pitch failures, I could use the slow period to my advantage and do some PR Planning for 2017.

Take these 3 tips to heart to brave the winter blues in your PR department.

Play on the Season

I poke fun at how dead the PR department gets in the winter since all of our business relies on communicating with others, but that doesn’t mean you put up your chairs and head home- no sir.

This is fun for both you and your clients writing the content you’re pitching- write holiday-themed content that will be a resource for leaders in your pitching audience. This gives your content a timely angle and makes it relatable to a large pool of readers- you just knocked out two newsworthy topics! This stuff is writing itself, folks.

Relate your topics around planning for the new year. Provide actionable ways for your audience to get excited about the new year and how they can prepare themselves. Gift guides, free downloads, resolutions and bundling top articles are all great pitches during this busy season.

Read about how Red Branch is inspiring holiday cheer: How you can Effect Positive Change This Holiday Season

Build Your Strategies

Take advantage of the tinsel tumbleweeds and build your beginning of the year strategies. Don’t release any big launches, news alerts, or campaigns in the dead of winter. Plan for the big launches while everyone is nestling up to the fire with cocoa and prepare to blow minds when productivity, motivation and interest is at its all time high in January.

Additionally, do an overview of all your tactics and campaigns that ran the past year. What did you try that made a big impact and what can you completely pitch and purge out of the department? Maybe you realized it’s time to ask your boss for a new tool to help with your efforts this coming year (we use Cision). Maybe you need an intern so you can focus on bigger projects that can’t seem to launch off the ground. Think big and get inspired to try new things.

Other PR housekeeping duties: freshen your lists, send cards and well wishes to your editors and analysts, cull out any HAROs or ProfNets you receive to only relevant areas, collect editorial calendars from your favorite publications so you can help your clients plan their strategy for next year.

Read more tips on media relations strategies: 5 Ways to Burn Out Your Media Contacts

Keep Pitching

If you don’t believe pitching articles is the best use of your time during the holidays, reach out to those who are still at their desks. Journalists and reporters still have deadlines to meet- now is the best time to make connections happen!

Sign up for HARO or Profnet to receive media opportunities directly to your inbox. You can grab radio spots, magazine placements, online quotes, BOOK INVOLVEMENT. This gets your client’s name out there as a professional and thought leader in their space and is a great way for you to expand your media network.

Read more advice on reaching out to the media: How to ‘Man Up’ and Tweet the Reporter

Don’t be fooled by the quiet inbox around the holidays. This is your time to be a PR ninja and prepare for incredible press campaigns in the beginning of the year. Write fun, cheerful content to remain relevant, evaluate success and losses to build a bigger and better strategy and keep your relationship building game strong! Let there be no winter blues, PR troops!

What are your tactics for staying head strong during the holidays? Tweet about it, we’re listening @RedBranch

The Branchers

We build the best damn marketing campaigns on the planet. And we do it for industries and companies you might not identify as easy to market (right away). Working here takes a very special kind of person.