Effective Media Relations: It’s About the Story!
I always get a ton of questions from business owners on how to get good PR for their company so I have asked PR expert Theresa Coles to share her insights on how to build effective publicity for your business. She will be guest blogging in this Friday spot for the next few weeks. Feel free to email any questions you have on PR to info@fmwalsh.com and Theresa will be happy to answer them.
One question I’m often asked by new clients is how good my relationships with the media are. Earlier in my career that question used to elicit the fairly typical “Of course they’re very good!” response. Over the years, however, I have learnt to answer the question more accurately: my relationships with the media are good, mainly because I’m very careful about not bothering them with anything less than a good story!
In my view, good media relations is primarily about the story you have to offer.
That’s not to say that good relationships aren’t important, and that building relationships isn’t an important part of any media relations program. However, no matter how good your relationship with the journalist, without a good story, you’re not going to get exposure. It’s amazing how good your relationship with the media can become if you have a few really good stories to offer them.
What the media needs is extremely changeable, and it’s really up to the editor or producer to decide what is newsworthy on any particular day. Ultimately this is decided by the public.
So the question is: “What’s the news value in a company’s activities, products or services?” Once you’ve given this some thought, it’s amazing to see how many possibilities exist to offer the media something they can use, and get the kind of exposure your client wants.
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Theresa E Coles
Principal: Syllable Words and Ideas
is a former journalist who “crossed over” to public relations some 15 years ago. She provides public relations services, with an emphasis on media relations, media relations training, issues management and crisis communication. You can contact her at 604-960-0515.
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I couldn’t agree with you more, Theresa, which is why I say I consider myself a graduate of the ‘where’s the content’ school of public relations.
While I have occasionally got very lucky with general interest media (as opposed to trade publications) when clients have insisted on issuing a media release without a lot of actual news value (’we’re rebranding our kiosks’), one of the hardest things to do is to manage client expectations re media relations and to explain the process of getting coverage.
And sometimes the flukey successes like the one I referred to above can even create unreasonable expectations in other clients.