More than 60% of national newspaper journalism is driven by PR and journalists are always looking for content. If you can provide the right journalists with the right stories and ideas, they will feature you. But this will only work if you can figure out what those “right stories and ideas” are. What might be of interest to you and your business isn’t necessarily going to be of interest to journalists. Knowing what is topical at the moment and finding out the type of stories that journalists are writing means that you can mould ideas for stories to the specific needs of each journalist. By only offering ideas and news that is relevant to a particular journalist and their news agenda, you make their job easier and they’ll often be grateful. This specifically targeted approach will make your company front of mind for journalists and will have a far greater impact than a generic blanket approach.
The days of press release driven PR are over. Pinging out untargeted press releases will grab journalists’ attention, but not in the way you were hoping for. Journalists receive hundreds, if not thousands of news stories every day. If you send them irrelevant information, you will simply be adding to their workload and they will not thank you for it. Unfocused activity can potentially damage your relationship with the press and put them off wanting to write about you.
