Crafting our clients’ stories in a way that’s appealing to the media is one of my absolute favorite things to do at Prosper. It’s something I feel lucky to have a knack for and that I get to do every day. All good storytelling should be grounded in strategy – but for today, I’ll keep it tactical.
So what is recipe for a slam dunk media story?
It’s timely.
Any time you can peg your story to something that’s already going on in the news, you have better chances of leveraging media outlets to help you tell your story. Create an calendar of major holidays, awareness months and annual events (or seasons). Then think through how you can relate your organization to these stories. Is there something going on in the news where you can lend your voice or expertise? For example, if you work at a veterans organization, think through stories you can pitch for Veterans Day in November and Military Appreciation Month in May. Are you spearheading a local parade? Is their a local veteran who has an amazing story (let’s be honest, they all do, but is there someone willing to share it with the media?) These are the type of timely angles you can plan for.
There are also timely angles that come up in the course of a day’s work. Keep a pulse on news impacting your industry. What are people talking about? What are the hot trends? Take the topic of millennials in the workplace or women in tech as examples. Share your stance by reaching out to a reporter covering the issue or draft a letter to the editor in response to something you strongly agree or disagree with.
It builds off a broader narrative.
While your goal is to get your story out there, remember reporters have a responsibility to appeal to their readers’ interests. You can help them do this by tying your story to a broader narrative. Is there something your organization is doing that represents a bigger trend within your sector? Look around you – are you doing things that buck the industry standard? Or are you part of a set of companies across similar industries making an impact? At Prosper Strategies, for example: we’re going rogue on the marketing agency model. We combine traditional media relations with digital strategies to create meaningful, measurable campaigns, complete with slam dunk media stories. While many of our competitors shy away from data to demonstrate ROI, we make put it at the center of everything we do, and that’s how we’re building off the a broader narrative in our industry about the future of PR and marketing.
You can back up your case.
Regardless of what you’re pitching, you have to back up your story. Remember, show, don’t tell! Is there a customer who can help you tell your story? Do you have statistics that make your story stronger? Do you have something visually compelling, such as video, audio or still photography? You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. If you don’t have access to any of these things, consider running a survey to collect your own data or develop an infographic to create your own visual. Whatever you do, the ability to back your story up with something real is essential. Check out coverage we recently garnered for our client Nonprofit HR by developing our own survey and sharing the results with an infographic.
