Getting Media Coverage Is Not the Same as Getting Known
Visibility is easy to count. Being remembered is a little more complicated.
I’ve been in PR and communications a pretty long time. Long enough to remember that landing a client in a major publication was a big win that could potentially change everything for the client and the publicist.
Of course this still matters… actually very much so.
But the world of media is in constant flux and over the past few years it has changed dramatically, including the way that people communicate and become known.
Now, there are so many ways to get noticed. You can talk up a storm on ten podcasts, post your best advice, tips and tricks on LinkedIn, be quoted in industry articles and mainstream news, share your voice in an op-ed, create a thought leadership piece and send out a press release announcing your latest news and see your name and company turn up all over Google.
And still you will have a visibility problem.
Because being seen isn’t the same thing as being remembered. And it definitely isn’t the same thing as being known.
The desire to count everything
PR has always been hard to quantify. For years, the industry has tried to prove its value using metrics like impressions, shares, likes and advertising value equivalency. If an article had 10 million monthly visitors, and your client was featured in that publication then that was supposed to mean that 10 million people read that article intently.
Well guess what? They weren’t. Maybe a small percentage were, maybe a significant percentage were but there was no exact science to quantify just how many people read that article.
And now we have even more things to count to prove our successes.
Media mentions, interviews, Podcast appearances. LinkedIn impressions. Substack subscribers. Search rankings. Engagement. Share of voice. Domain authority, and on and on.
And, of course, the latest, everyone wants to know if ChatGPT is aware they exist.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t count
Don’t get me wrong. We need to count. Clients need to see results and know whether things are working. No sound strategy can exist without solid numbers to back it up.
But I think we can get so busy counting that we lose sight of the true goal: to have our clients stand out, to have their brands make an impact, in other words, to make sure that they aren’t just seen but known.
Multiple media mentions are wonderful. So is being a guest on ten podcasts, having a large social media following, a bylined article in a major publication and ranking high on Google.
But even with all this, what happens when someone sees your name pop up again and again? Do they know what you do? Do they know what you think? Do they trust you? Do they even remember you?
To me, that is where getting known begins.
We can get so busy counting how many media hits we’ve secured that we forget to ask the much more important question: What are people actually starting to know you for?
That’s where things start to get interesting.
You can be everywhere and still be known for nothing.
I see this more often than you might think.
A company wants publicity, so they start conducting PR. The founder talks about leadership on one podcast. Innovation on another. AI in a contributed article. Work/life balance on LinkedIn. Sustainability in a media interview. Maybe there’s a press release about a new product thrown in for good measure.
Technically, they’re doing everything right. They’re visible.
But six months later, ask someone outside the company what that Founder is known for and the answer may still be: Who’s that?
That’s not necessarily a PR failure. It’s often a strategic positioning failure.
The problem isn’t that nobody saw the content. It’s that nothing stuck.
Good PR is repetitive
This is one of the less exciting truths about becoming known. You must repeat yourself.
Not word for word. Please don’t do that!
But the main ideas and themes need to show up over and over.
If you want to become known as the person who understands why small businesses struggle with client retention, you can’t just weigh in on the topic once and treat it as the be-all, end-all. That discussion is happening in multiple different outlets across a variety of media formats all the time, and your name should be popping up wherever that topic is being talked about.
You don’t need to suddenly weigh in on workplace culture because somebody advised you that personal branding requires content diversification. You’re allowed to have a lane.
In fact, lanes are quite powerful.
The people we think of as highly visible usually aren’t known for 57 different things. They’re associated with a handful of ideas, and sometimes only one.
That isn’t limiting. That’s effective positioning.
The media still matters
Every once in a while, someone announces that traditional media is dead.
The media climate has been incredibly energetic for something that’s supposed to have been dead for about 20 years!
A credible media placement still does something that a self-published post can’t quite do: it’s earned media. A third party is validating you. You are not self-promoting. This itself creates credibility and trust.
But I don’t think media relations works very well anymore when it’s treated as the sole solution.
A strong interview can result in a podcast invite.
Which can lead people to your website.
Your website can lead them to a recent article you’ve written.
That article can lead them to subscribe to your Substack.
Months later, they may see you quoted somewhere else.
Now something very cool starts happening.
They recognize your name. They know what you’re about. That’s different. That matters. That gets you known.
And now we have AI to think about
As if we didn’t have enough acronyms to keep track of!
We’re now talking about AEO, GEO and whether brands are appearing in AI-generated answers.
This matters. I think it will continue to matter a great deal.
But the basic principle hasn’t changed nearly as much as some of us believe.
If you want search engines, journalists, AI systems, and actual real-life humans to understand who you are and what you are about, there needs to be a reasonable amount of credible, consistent information out there about you.
What do you know? What do you talk about? Where have you been quoted? What have you written? Who else considers you credible?
Reputation is becoming more easily searchable, and I don’t mean just reviews.
Getting known is cumulative
This is the part I think companies underestimate.
There usually isn’t one magical piece of coverage that changes everything. (Though sometimes there is. Enjoy it when it happens!!)
Most of the time, reputation builds much more gradually. It tends to snowball.
One article.
Then another.
A podcast.
A journalist who remembers you from the last time.
An informative LinkedIn post.
An introduction.
A speaking opportunity.
Someone searches your name and finds enough credible material to think, Okay, this person knows what they’re talking about.
Eventually, you’re no longer introducing yourself from scratch every single time. That’s when visibility starts turning into reputation.
And reputation is the part worth building.
So, what are you trying to be known for?
Before worrying about how many podcast pitches went out this month or whether your latest LinkedIn post got 847 impressions, I’d ask this question.
Not simply:
Where do we want to appear?
But:
What do we want people to think of when our name appears?
Once you know that, the rest of the communications strategy gets easier. Media coverage matters. Podcasts matter. Thought leadership matters. LinkedIn matters. Your own content matters.
But none of those things, by themselves, make someone known.
They are the pieces. Together they build the reputation. If the pieces are all solid, then that reputation will be truly built to last.