By Mark Ferguson
More Fire PR
WANT to communicate with your clients effectively? Then focus on creating impactful content that matters to them.
Some journalists I know thoroughly enjoy telling me how they often read the headline and, if feeling particularly generous, maybe the first sentence or so of press releases they receive.
That’s usually about as far as they get before deleting and moving onto the next pressing subject landing in their inbox.
They’re not alone. It’s a natural reaction to information that’s relevant to us, or not. Whether it’s a press headline, email, TV programme or radio commentator, we’re constantly acting on or rejecting a flood of messages and content.
First we consider the medium itself. Whether we like the politics or angle taken by a particular press or social media feed depends upon our personal tastes, past experience, peers’ opinions, and a host of other immediate decision-making factors.
So how does understanding all of this help your business? Whatever field you work in there’s a need to tell stories about what you do to audiences that matter.
Effective PR helps bridge the gap by shaping your story for the journalist, editor, reader, viewer or listener and answering the two most important questions they have: ‘So what?’ and ‘What’s in it for me?’ If you can quickly address these crucial demands you’re on the right track.
To achieve this your news should, naturally, be newsworthy. Be dramatic, quirky, new/topical/timely, factually accurate, and concise.
If you have an enticing image to accompany your words, all the better – even radio has online pages these days. To be clear, the press release isn’t dead. It just needs to stand-out from the crowd and matter. Include relevant commentary, offer further contact details, and be appropriately targeted.
The humble news release really is worth spending professional time and effort on. You might feel warm and fuzzy outputting 30-plus stories a month, but it’s much better to deliver just one or two that will actually reach your audience and have the desired impact.
For help communicating your messages powerfully email / www.morefirepr.co.uk