When you think about search and social media, I bet you spend most of your time thinking about traffic, customer engagement and brand awareness. Whilst you’re not wrong, there may be more to that last one that you haven’t considered before.

Brand awareness isn’t just about having a random customer find you via Google or Facebook. Have you ever thought about how channels such as search and social media are used by journalists? The fact is journalists and media outlets utilise both to a great extent.

Search and social media play significant roles in PR and you don’t want to forget this when it comes to getting your project or site in front of them. What can you do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job?

One way you can potentially increase your media coverage and in turn increase your brand awareness, is to optimise your content for what you think a journalist is looking for.

Online journalists often have tighter deadlines therefore turn to blogs and social networks for instant sources of information. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search is what a journalist needs to find someone who’s talking about the subject they’re writing about.

Which is why Google’s real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists use Google anyway to research what they’re writing about. If what they’re looking for happens to be related to a news-worthy topic then they might see Google’s real-time results before anything else. If that topic happens to be something you’re talking about, then you might just be the one they pick from those results.

The point is, if you’re looking for increased media coverage then there are ways to increase your chance of getting in front of the right people. If journalists are now using their contacts within their social networks to find sources, then now is a great reason for you to be engaging in social media on a regular basis.