PR agency Rural Roots Media celebrates "wooden" anniversary
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Rutland-based PR firm, Rural Roots Media celebrates five years in business this week and has bucked the trend by growing its team during the pandemic.
Despite specialising in tourism PR - an industry that has ground to a halt for much of the last year - the business has grown from a team of one to a team of six, operating as a boutique agency in just nine-months.
Founder, Megan Allen, explains: “This time last year, I did a lot of work with my clients on why they should continue to tell their stories across digital and traditional media during lockdown – at that time we only thought it’d be 12-weeks.
“Fortunately, they listened, and we had our best summer of press coverage ever, working with the likes of The Guardian, Lonely Planet and The Telegraph to put rural tourism businesses at the fingertips and on the screens of their target audiences.”
As a result, Megan started working with some dream clients – including tourism destination organisations Discover Rutland and Destination Nene Valley – to further promote not only small tourism businesses but the wider area. She has also grown her core and associated teams; choosing to work with other freelance writers, designers, photographers and marketers in Rutland and Stamford to outsource work to and support the local economy.
This month, she grew the team further, incorporating account managers Rebecca Scrase in Suffolk and Edie Methven in Berkshire, to boost the regional expertise and specialisms of her team.
Megan said: “It’s been really important to me to support other local and rural businesses in the last year and my core team are based here in Rutland. We’re really looking forward to using the new co-working space in Oakham in the near future.
“It has been a learning curve for me – I’ve been so used to working alone – but there’s no way I could have grown my business this year without them. I just wouldn’t have had the capacity.”
This weekend, to celebrate the anniversary, Rural Roots Media is relaunching its digital magazine the Rural Travel Guide (www.ruraltravelguide.co.uk) which is a content forward website to promote rural Britain to the rest of the world.
Megan said: “I’m so excited to be relaunching the Rural Travel Guide. It’s been on the backburner for over a year as we waited for the tourism industry to restart again and we offered free listings last year as our way of helping to promote businesses for free.
“Getting people out of cities and into the countryside to boost our economy and showcase our wonderful landscapes and producers is something I’m really passionate about and this is the next step for us. The trends this year certainly hint that there is a huge appetite for it.”
For more information visit www.rural-roots.co.uk
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Editors notes
For more information, contact Megan Allen at Rural Roots Media at megan@rural-roots.co.uk or call 07730599358
Image: Team Rural Roots Rutland from left: Harriet Flather (HF Marketing Solutions), Megan Allen (Rural Roots Media), Emily Gardiner (Free to be Creative) and freelancer writer Sue Parslow. Credit Amanda Forman Photography
A full library of images can be found here: Credit Amanda Forman Photography https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kzgqqwjtc5ktoyh/AAB_zJGaRKvb3V5Brioj6IOqa?dl=0
About Rural Roots Media:
Rural Roots Media was founded in May 2016 by journalist and PR Megan Allen to support independent rural tourism, food and farm diversification businesses.
Despite navigating IVF treatment, pregnancy, premature parenthood and the pandemic, it has grown enormously in the last five years and is on a mission to make PR affordable and accessible for rural businesses.
For more information visit www.rural-roots.co.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RuralRootsPR
Instagram: Instagram.com/ruralrootspr
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RuralRootsMedia
About The Rural Travel Guide:
The Rural Travel Guide was first founded as a blog in 2017 but quickly became a popular outlet for people planning trips to rural Britain. It will relaunch on May 1st 2021, as a news and features focussed platform with a directory of business, added PR support for members and exciting offers from its partners.
