For Optimum PR, Lose These Ideas
Even with the importance of social media today, media relations or earned media is still one of the most sure-fire pathways to perceived expertise and market leadership. When a company’s subject matter expert (SME) contributes an article or blog content or is interviewed by a reporter for a staff-written story in a key media outlet in the industry, it provides instant credibility for the company. Readers assume that if you’re writing for an important publication that your content has some authority. It’s not a paid-for appearance. Your company becomes the perceived expert.
Generally, the opportunity to be featured in the media in this way comes from a PR pro, whether in-house or from an outside agency. This is true because these media professionals know what media and outlets are most desirable for your company to best reach your target customers, what other stories are being written, and how to approach the editors with material and story angles that will appeal to them. Sometimes, however, a reporter or editor may approach an SME directly. Maybe the editor saw a presentation by this expert, saw a video or read other content written by the SME. (When this happens, the SME should contact their PR department post haste, if they have one.) Either way, it’s important that the next steps meet the editor’s expectations and needs. The fact is the relationship between the media and company SMEs is a two-way street. Companies need to reach editors and reporters who serve as the gatekeepers for influential publications, and editors need industry experts to keep them up to date on all the newest trends, technologies and solutions. But only if the material the company provides fits the reporter’s needs and specifications. Here are some key “don’ts,” with a few accompanying “do’s” –
Never assume the editor wants to “write a story about us.” Unless the publication is a financial outlet and your public company has just had record earnings or losses, chances are good, no publication wants to write a profile about you. If their readers don’t care, they don’t care. It’s the job of the “pitch” to help them care.
Don’t expect the publication to come up with the story idea. There are way too many good stories and too few editors to know and cover them all. Sometimes, a reporter may approach a company with a roundup topic on which they want multiple comments and input from a variety of experts. If you wait for these stories, however, you won’t get a lot of coverage. Instead, you want to come up with story angles of your own and “pitch” them to the press proactively.
Good story angles are not about products or services except in those rare instances where publications are actually covering a particular product type. Good stories are about problems that large numbers of the people who read that publication have and how to solve those problems using a particular method or technology.
Resist, resist, resist the desire to name the technology or add your brand when you’re contributing an article or guest blog. The only case (there are exceptions) where your company name should appear in most good stories is under the author’s name. The moment you name a technology or approach or add a product to a contributed article is the minute the story’s credibility drops in the reader’s eyes. More importantly, the editor will likely not accept the story. The exception, of course, is if the article is staff-written by the reporter. At Strategies, we’ve managed to take a company technology that is exclusive to our client – the only one on the market – and create a generic, problem-solving article about it.
Some publications are written entirely by staff, in which case, the job becomes suggesting topics of interest to the editors and then supplying information to them if they select one of your ideas.
To create good content for publications, the authors need to learn “generic voice.” How can you describe the market need/problem for the solution you have in mind and then give the steps of the solution in such a way as to suggest that the readers can take the steps or make the decisions themselves? It’s wise to give anything you write to a PR professional to check this approach – or allow the PR department to write from expert input.
For every one of these do’s and don’ts, PR professionals have dozens more. Rely on them when you can. Meanwhile, these tips will get you on the road to good media coverage.
