How a boutique store won major coverage with no PR budget
A group blog that tapped a diverse group of writers helped a small organic food and goods business score coverage in major print and TV outlets.
Based on a successful smaller experiment with guest-blogging on the FAIT ICI website, we created the separate Ici et here blog, and invited 52 prominent, quirky, and interesting members of the Montreal food community to post over a 52-week span.
The bloggers are a diverse group that includes chefs, local food bloggers, journalists, a Hollywood actress, a New York Times bestselling author, and even my mom and dad. Each author posts only once, and we publish once a week. Authors are not assigned specific topics but are asked to tell a story that touches on the interplay of food and life in Montreal. Because it’s a bilingual city, some posts are in French, others in English.
Here are the goals we set, and whether we achieved them:
Goal No. 1: Harvest great content for our owned media properties. This was the most easily achievable goal. By partially outsourcing the creation of content, we’ve had far more original material than would have been otherwise possible. Bottom line: The beast is fed!
Goal No. 2: Generate earned media and attention. Here are some facts:
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