Here’s a little secret of the PR industry: the news media likes news.

Any PR firm worth its salt will get any client a nice spike of coverage, when they have newsworthy information to share.

After the big news event comes the trough of despair.  That’s the point at which coverage slows to a trickle — and when clients start to wonder what they’re paying that fancypants PR firm for, anyway. 

You need to PLAN for that inevitable dip in coverage.  You need to create a schedule of events, a timeline for content creation and distribution, etc., to make that dip a shallow one. 

You might have gained a placement for a bylined article that gets scheduled to appear a few weeks after the Big Launch.  You might have created a series of case study videos to vlog about in the subsequent months after the Big Launch.  You could have netted a juicy speaking engagement for the client CEO in the month following the Big Launch.  You might have done all of those things, and more, in the months before the Big Launch.  (Just think of how relaxed you could feel, with all of that spadework already accomplished!)

You can’t promise the moon every month, but you need never fall into a pit, either.  A month without meaningful, “move the ball downfield” activity is a very, very bad month.

Successful PR is not about the Big Launch.  It’s about the follow-through.

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