Almost every profession has experienced the proliferation of lists and rankings. Key trade publications, Web sites, bloggers and even dedicated, for-profit research and publishing companies are picking their “Top 10,” “Best of,” professionals “of the Year” and “Who’s Who.”
For PR folks, these lists are a great opportunity to showcase clients – writing solid nominations for those who have notable achievements within the survey’s designated timeframe and even exercising some creative writing abilities for those with achievements requiring more, um, explanation.
Upon delivery of the formal notification-of-inclusion letters, we get exclamation point-filled emails of thanks. But, invariably, these communications include the knife-in-gut question, “What can we do to leverage this from a PR standpoint?”
The fact is most publications have their own lists, so publishing the “news” about inclusion in another publication’s/blogger’s/Web site’s list is of no interest – or worse, proof that stroking your ego makes spamming journalists all right. The people who may care and be impressed by your inclusion among the “Super Heroes of the Real Estate World” are your clients and potential clients (as well as good ol’ mom and your Facebook friends).
Attention of this sort certainly gets additional attention, and the second or third nomination tends to be much more successful when you’ve secured inclusion on one listing. These honors belong on biographies, link to and from them repeatedly, advertise them in print or in firm tweets, send announcements via direct mail or email, push them out to the Web world via your site, but please, please don’t expect PR on your PR.