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Business Tips

Four powerful ways to use a business calendar to raise your profile

Relevance and recognition derives from the ways in which you engage with social conversations, activities and milestones in your industry. A business calendar is the greatest tool for identifying the dates and events you should be commenting on and reacting to, that’s why we spend so many resources on creating the Business Calendar on Journolink.

The fastest way to make yourself socially irrelevant is to forget or fail to engage with anniversaries, milestones and social occasions like birthdays, festivals (Christmas, Eid, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day et al), and special occasions. The same is true of your brand or business. Relevance and recognition derives from the ways in which you engage with social conversations, activities and milestones in your industry. When you engage you make your business and brand a reality in the market. Customers, associates, partners and the media see you are a fixture, a player in the market and so cannot be ignored.

A business calendar is the greatest tool for identifying the dates and events you should be commenting on and reacting to, that’s why we spend so many resources on creating the Business Calendar on Journolink. With this tool you don’t have to miss important dates that enable you to keep your brand front of mind in your industry, and here are four important ways you can use this and other calendars.

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Shape YOUR news

You’d never enter a conversation without first finding out what the conversation was about. Likewise, you’d never engage with media without finding out what the media is talking about or interested in. When you know what is being talked about, you can “shape your news” to make it relevant and significant. The business calendar enables you to identify what those conversations are going to be and what people are likely to say. Our calendar gives you a heads up on awards days, important Charity events and tradeshows, and you can filter these by region and industry to suit your interests.

Another key notification is important News Dates when Government and Trade figures are released. Did you know that this week alone the following were published? Great British Visits Data (affecting the travel, tourism and hospitality industries and more); Visits to the dentist Data (affecting food, health, Hygiene, Drinks businesses) Creative Industries benefits to the Economy Data (Affecting Design, Arts, Tech, Culture trades); UK Balance of Trade Data (affecting import export, EU Trade, Referendum voting intentions, Trade documentation, Currency dealings and a host more activities)? Each one of those published events was an opportunity for businesses in those sectors to establish their expertise, experience, thought leadership and presence, by commenting, and sharing insights. Journalists are hungry to garner comment, insight and real life perspectives from the people who are making the news that is behind those trade and government figures. So you can use the business calendar to shape the news you put out to raise the profile of your brand and its expertise.

Shape THE News

Journalists are always looking for fresh angles and items of news others have not thought of. You are pushing against an open door if you can introduce them to those news angles and hitherto undiscovered news. Remember they are in the business to be read and listened to and to do that it helps if they can provide something others have not yet talked of. So as a business you can help to shape what becomes news by introducing new subjects and new perspectives which tomorrow will become mainstream news in your sector. We enable this by letting you add un-publicised but significant events and milestones in your sector onto our business calendar. Every Journalist will have it pop up on their radar and you’d have already taken the first step to shaping what others will be talking about. If you add you experience and insight in your News or Press Release, you’d be starting a trend. You and your brand will become news worthy.

Engage with or start campaigns

Connecting with public campaigns is a great way to get media coverage. It shows that your business is not just about me me me, has a wider public relevance and a mission to create value for others, not just wealth for its founders. The important charity events in the year are listed on ours and other business calendars, but nothing stops you launching your own campaign to promote an issue of wider interest to others in your field or sector. An example is The  Microbizmatters Campaign started by Tony Robinson OBE and Tina Boden, of Enterprise Rockers, to promote the interest of Microbusinesses. This started as a UK campaign and has now become an international day of action to support Microbusiness. Those who engage with it support other Micro Businesses while raising their profile because it’s become a day of extensive media coverage for all involved. You could start your own event, put it on the calendar and help yourself and others. Or you could engage with an existing campaign with a track record.

Plan Ahead

Finally, a business calendar enables you to plan ahead and decide what your company can and should be talking about. Each sector has its important dates, we are all affected by government data, and trends and developments emerge as the year runs on.  By planning what we are going to be talking about and then sending press releases to give our news, we get the opportunity to shape who we are and what we look like in the market place. Customers engage with people who are realities in the market and so do partners and the media. The Calendar is an invaluable tool to make this happen. If you’re a Journolink client, open your calendar notification when it comes to you each week and start to set your agenda.

For more help using calendars to improve your PR contact the JournoLink team on mailto:sales@journolink.com

Written by: Tetteh Kofi, Brand Ambassador for JournoLink

Tetteh is a broadcast journalist with credits on the BBC, ITN, LBC and Colourful Radio in news and current affairs. He published newspapers and has run training and crisis management programmes for multinationals and government agencies across Europe.

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