A strong piece of coverage in a publication your buyers read is one of the best things that can happen to an early-stage company. It is also easy to waste. Most founders share the link once, enjoy a busy afternoon on LinkedIn and move on, when the same article could be doing useful work for months.
This guide covers what to do in the first week and how coverage now feeds the answers AI assistants give your buyers. It then looks at how to turn a single win into a PR programme that keeps going.
Start with the channels you already own, because they are quick to use and you control them. Share the article on LinkedIn from the company page and from the founders' own profiles, and tag the journalist and the publication. Ask colleagues to comment and reshare in the first few hours, since that is when the platform decides how widely to show a post.
Next, give the coverage a permanent home on your website. A press page that lists each article with a short summary and a link builds credibility with visitors. It also becomes the natural place for a media kit, with the logos and photographs a journalist needs when they write about you again.
Then put the coverage in front of the people you most want to reach. Include it in the next newsletter to customers and investors, and add a small banner to your team's email signatures that links to the press page. Tag every link with UTM codes (HubSpot has a clear guide to how they work), so your analytics show which channels sent people to the site.
It does, and it is one of the main reasons coverage is worth more today than it was a few years ago. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity which suppliers to consider, the assistant builds its answer from the sources it reads. Independent media are among the few sources in that answer that don't come from a vendor.
Our research on over 1.3 million AI citations found that about three in four media citations come from trade and specialist titles when buyers are choosing a supplier. Trade articles also keep getting cited long after publication, typically when they are about nine months old, whereas tech news tends to drop out of the answers within a few weeks. A good feature in the right trade title is therefore a long-lived asset for your AI visibility as well as your reputation. The full findings are in our free report, Earned media in the age of AI answers.
You can help the assistants find and trust the coverage by linking to it from your press page and quoting it accurately in your own content. Make sure the facts in the article match the facts on your website, because assistants are more likely to repeat a claim when several independent sources agree on it.
The journalist who wrote about you is now your warmest contact in the media, so keep in touch with them. Send updates only when they are genuinely newsworthy, offer data or an early look at announcements, and reply quickly when they ask for comment on something else. Relationships built this way lead to further coverage far more reliably than cold pitching.
Coverage also gives your leadership team the credibility to write and speak about your market. Offer bylined articles to the trade titles your buyers read, and put your founders forward for panels and podcasts. Each contributed piece adds to the body of independent material that buyers and AI assistants both draw on.
Look beyond journalists as well, to the analysts and community voices your buyers follow. Sharing the coverage with them and following up with something useful often leads to mentions and invitations that reach audiences the original article didn't touch.
Begin by deciding what PR is for in your business over the next year, such as awareness in a new market or credibility with investors. The objective shapes which publications and stories you pursue. Then plan a regular rhythm of news and insight, from product milestones and customer stories to research and commentary, so you have something worth telling journalists every month.
Measurement keeps the programme honest. Track your coverage and share of voice against competitors, the enquiries that coverage sends to your website, and how the AI assistants describe your company when buyers ask about your category. Reviewing those numbers each quarter shows you what is working and where to put more effort.
You don't need an agency retainer to build these habits. A self-serve platform such as Agentcy, which we built at Resonance, lets a small team monitor its coverage and AI visibility, spot news worth commenting on and draft pitches. Self-serve plans start from £200 a month, which makes it a practical way to keep momentum after a first big win while you work out how much support you need.
An agency makes sense once PR is clearly working and you want to move faster than your own team can, for example ahead of a funding round or a launch in a new market. A good agency brings relationships with the journalists who cover your sector, along with a view on how your story fits the market and the time to run a programme properly.
If you're unsure, start with a defined project such as a launch or a research campaign. That lets you judge the agency's impact and fit before you commit to a longer retainer.