With the amount of breaking news and interest stories that inundate journalists on an hourly basis, it can often prove quite difficult to secure media coverage in a publication, particularly in a national newspaper. 72point.com has come up with ’20 Tips To Help You Secure National News Coverage’.
The golden rule to securing press coverage is to read the nationals every day – in print and online.
Only by understanding these publications can you hope to communicate with them in a way that can secure you coverage.
But to help you along the way, here are their top 20 tips:
1. The benchmark is what News Editors consider to be interesting, so remember to:
- Challenge or reinforce stereotypes: “Truckers have the best diets” or “Blondes have more fun”
- Make a lifestyle statement: Death of the fry-up / The bath is making a comeback / Tea overtakes coffee
- Create acronyms
- Identify syndromes
- Split people into types / groups
- Calculate lifetime spends
- Find “the average Aussie”
2. Remember the product may be exciting to you but think: If you told one other person, would they pass the information on? How did your partner /friends respond when you told them about it?
3. Don’t forget the detail. The Five ‘Ws’ and one ‘H’ Who / Why / What / When / Where / How. If a journalist writes about a story they will want to know everything.
4. Make sure your intro is not over two lines long, and, where possible, that the copy follows the ABCA rule:
A) Is the opening paragraph. It has to be short, sharp and punchy – “Britain is in the grip of web rage, according to new research.”B) You have created the momentum with a hard hitting opening paragraph: now crank it up another notch with a powerful second sentence – “More and more people are getting wound up over the length of time it takes to download material.”
C) Third paragraph is the consequence opportunity – “Now one top web provider has appointed an online counsellor to sort out internet rows.”
A) Fourth paragraph can be used to support the attention grabbing opener with a ball-busting quote or knock-out fact – “The cyber-rage phenomenon e
merged from a survey of 3,000 computer-owning households by XXX”
5. When selling in over the phone, don’t make it sound like the most exciting story in the world. It’s not likely to even be the most exciting story that day – remember you are talking to people who deal with the most dramatic and incredible stories in the world on that day. Again: DON’T OVERSELL.
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Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more great tips visit our website www.cpcommunications.com.au.
