1. Check out Coach on the CouchMay, 2009
Five steps to media success
Understand how the press works and they can be your greatest ally, helping
you communicate information regarding your products and services to a wide
audience.
Try to ‘manage’ the media if you don’t understand how they work and you’re likely to waste time, money and potentially damage the reputation of your company. So says Simon Corbett of Jargon Public Relations. He’s here to tell us about positive media relations.
Love it or hate it, the media has a huge impact on our lives. Radio, newspapers, trade magazines, pod casts, blogs, on-line news sites, etc, they help direct our thoughts and feelings towards a specific issue, a person or a company and influence our perception.
Small businesses often provide the most interesting content for the media. Why - because they are often more interesting, more ambitious, more entrepreneurial and usually have a good human angle behind them that tells the story of a passionate owner/manager building their business.
So what are the five things you need to know to get yourself talked about by the media:-
1. Segmentation
Think of the media you would most like to be in, this process usually begins
with the media your potential customers read.
2. Target
Read the media you would like to be in. Look out for regular features that
are covered and keep abreast of industry issues. Also note the names of
the writers responsible for the sections you’d like to be in.
3. Position
Decide how to position your organisation. Are you an entrepreneurial new
start-up, a fast growing ‘one to watch’ for the future or a product innovator?
Correctly positioning your organisation in the minds of a reporter is crucial.
Once you occupy that position, it is more difficult to change it than create
it.
4. Content
Plan the content you would like a reporter to write about. Perhaps you
have won a new customer, have created a new product innovation or perhaps
‘you’ are the USP to the business?
5. Approach
You’ve chosen the media you would like to appear within, you have targeted
the correct reporter, have positioned your business and have developed the
content for the story, the final piece is to approach the reporter. Everyone
works differently, but the standard rule is to e-mail first, leave it a
day and then call offering something additional to the content of your e-mail.
There’s nothing that will infuriate a reporter than a call asking “did you
get my e-mail.”
Most important is to think about the ‘news’ that you consumer, do you read newspapers, watch TV news, listen to the radio? Think about what news you listen to and why it is news, it is usually something that is new, unique and exciting.
A reporter will only want to write about you and your business if you fulfill one of these criteria, or can offer a unique point-of-view on a specific topic - if you can do this, you will have the opportunity to achieve some fantastic media coverage promoting you and your business.