So, you’ve been interviewed on a TV show, or you’ve been invited to be a blogger on a popular website. Awesome!  Good for you!  No matter how much you promote your business to potential clients, there’s nothing like getting a little leg up from the media. Now that you’ve gotten the attention, how do you convert that into actual sales?  Read on, friends!

Use the coverage as an excuse to reach out

Media attention provides you with the perfect excuse to send out a mailer mentioning that you were covered by a high profile source. If you were just voted “best of,” for something, shout it from the rooftops!  Send out a postcard, an email or a letter telling folks about it.

If you own a product-focused business, you could send a letter or postcard that says something like:

As you may have seen already, we were recently featured in Ridiculously Cool Stuff magazine and it looks like folks are really starting to take notice of our ridiculously cool stuff!  Because of all this recent attention, we are selling out fast, so we’re reaching out to see if you’d be interested in placing an order before it’s all gone!

If you’re a service-based business it could say:

Since we last met to talk about our services, we’ve gotten some exciting attention from the media about our Super Deluxe Awesomesauce Package, and we know this is exactly what you were interested in learning more about. Here’s a link to the coverage for you to take a look at.

Let’s get together and talk soon!

Any way you can think of to get the word out there without being obnoxious and braggadocios (Great word, right?  Now use it in a sentence today!) is a good thing. Be humble about it and share your excitement and you will go far.

Put copies of your press coverage where your customers can see it

Have you ever noticed framed reviews hanging up at a restaurant?  They kind of make the food taste better once you read how much a food critic enjoyed it, right?  Perhaps the article even inspired you to try a dish you hadn’t tried before!  This is exactly why you need to post news of your press coverage where buying decisions are made. You can even do it on your website by putting an “as seen in…” in your product description. If you sell a service, the press coverage could be mentioned in your proposal descriptions.

Share the backstory

Everyone loves a good behind-the-scenes story, so why not share it with your clients on your blog?  Did you get the media’s attention or did they reach out to you?  What was it like to be interviewed on camera, and what was the interviewer like?  How did you celebrate afterward?  Whatever it is you’d like to share, do it. Everyone loves to live vicariously through you during your 15 minutes of fame!

Social media

Of course you’ll want to leverage social media to share and share and share about it! Tweet links on Twitter and share it on Facebook. If you have a LinkedIn account, share it on there too!  Make sure as many people know about it as you can. You can also use your social media channels or your email list to tell people about the coverage if you know about it in advance so they can join the fun.

Even though it’s great for putting your name out there, getting press attention doesn’t automatically send people running through your doors. You’ve to make it happen and build on that momentum!