4 tenets for earned media success

Everyone’s startup wants to be in Tech Crunch or in another prestigious outlet—pronto. When Carve Communications’ CEO David Barkoe hears such aspirations, he likes to offer a little context.

“Have you received $10 million? Are you being purchased for $100 million? Or are you involved in some kind of scandal?” He gives a chuckle as he describes the imagined back and forth with the attention-starved client looking to make a big media splash. “Give me one of those things and I can get you into Tech Crunch.”

However, he says there is plenty of room for smaller—perhaps more meaningful—earned media wins when you focus on what he describes as his “four tenets.”

“I’ve been doing this for 22 years and the only constant in PR over those 22 years is there has been no one way to measure PR,” Barkoe says. When looking to explain the value of his team’s efforts, he focuses on his four tenets as tentpoles that hold up a holistic strategy.

Awareness

This is the traditional part of earned media, Barkoe explains. “Media relations generates that awareness through the press, right?” he says. With awareness as its goal, he looks to “get coverage across the board, big media, traditional, trade media, etc.”

Authority