[Guest Post] Getting Ink: How to Tell Your Business Story
We make the list every year. In 2016, we’re #6 Most Stressful Jobs according to Forbes, right behind military personnel and emergency first responders. PR executives get a bad rap for being hacks or flacks but at the end of the day, they’re the ones taking the heat if your company is under fire by the media.
It’s not just crisis communications that make the job stressful, although there is no shortage of PR fails that social media so dutifully captures and dissects. Quite simply, if PR were easy everyone would do it and do it well.
It’s the pressure to “get ink” or influencer shares with impossible deadlines, incomplete information and incoherent messaging. It also requires giving up some control and building strong relationships with reporters to tell the best story. At the end of the day, there is no magic wand to make a bad story “go away” or dictate what reporters will write.
Public relations and securing earned media is all about third-party validation, what others say about your company, products or services. What’s your customer experience? Are they advocates or adversaries? What are your overarching business objectives and how will public relations support those efforts? Put on your hack or flack hat and learn the fundamentals to tell your business story:
Create news value.
This is the excavation work that needs to be done inside an organization to identify the heart of the story. How does it impact your customers, prospects, partners or the industry? It needs to be timely and relevant to your target audience. New products, services, executive hires, strategic partnerships, charitable giving, national or industry awards, national speaking engagements are all examples of company news. If you want to tell a growth story, you need numbers to demonstrate your position: revenue, sales, customers, employees, offices, retention and organic growth.
Recruit spokespeople.
Who is impacted by the news? Who can talk about it on your behalf? Do you have customers, partners or industry experts willing to share their perspectives with media? Nothing has more influence than a credible third-party validating your position. Leverage all the relationships that you can to package a story for media that they’ll want to write.
Read before you pitch.
Before you fire off an email to pitch to a reporter, read what they’re writing about and find the angle that will interest them. Journalists are under more pressure than ever before to deliver news across multiple platforms and mediums. They don’t have time to wade through a long, drawn-out pitch to find the news value. Learn who covers your industry, their writing style, and topics that interest them. Read local daily, weekly or monthly publications and industry publications to identify trends where you could provide a different perspective.
Nail the pitch.
When reaching out to media, the best tenet is to keep it short. Provide the basics (who, what, when, where and why) and offer executive or customer interviews, photo or video opportunities, third-party experts or cite published research to support your position. What are you providing a reporter that they haven’t covered before or a new angle they haven’t explored?
There are many resources to help you master media relations and here are a few on my must-read list:
•   PRNewser – Sometimes snarky but definitely worth a look for best (or worst) practices. They also host a variety of webinars and conferences.
•   PRWeek – Largest industry publication that features case studies and PR campaign analysis as well as sector coverage including public affairs, healthcare, and technology. It also hosts a variety of conferences on various disciplines.
•   Bulldog Reporter – Keep up on trends, agency news, and latest PR measurement tools.
Julie Lilliston is the owner of Julie Lilliston Communications LLC a public relations consultancy in Nashville, Tenn., that specializes in businesses and non-profits. She helps clients share their stories to audiences who matter and gets them ink.
