STRATEGY. After several years of working with commercial solar installer, developer and financier, Standard Solar, W+A recommended that the company take advantage of a rapidly growing solar market and a variety of policy issues that were destined to have a significant near and long-term impact. The recommendation included an increased public relations budget, and as importantly, a comprehensive social media and content program. The W+A team developed a thematic calendar highlighting the program’s focus each quarter and primary activities each month. All PR, social media and content developed followed the themes of the calendar, supporting the sales and corporate positioning efforts.

Throughout the calendar year, each and every press release included key messaging from the thematic calendar; contributed articles were developed based on the company’s key competencies, industry trends and policy moves; blogs were written to underscore editorial themes and reinforce thought leadership; and a comprehensive social media campaign was designed to support and further amplify the company’s thought leadership in the industry.

RESULTS. The success of the enhanced PR, social media and content program for Standard Solar was an astronomical success. The results speak for themselves:

• Media coverage of Standard Solar increased nearly 300 percent, including more than 50 proactively placed news articles, case studies
• Proactive social media campaign saw significant successes, including:
• complete visual refresh of company’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages
  more than 20 original content blog posts (50 percent increase)
• 1,027 original twitter posts resulting in more than 250,000 user impressions, 3,000+ engagements and 480 retweets of content
• Increased volume of press releases (16 in 2015 vs. 11 in 2014)