Free marketing is essential for entrepreneurs and new businesses. Buying ads and commercials can drain your startup budget before the first product or service is ever sold.
PR is the magic alternative. Getting journalists to write about you in their newspapers or magazines is not only free, but also more trustworthy than ads. And by getting publicity in articles, you avoid the ad-blindness, that many readers have developed.
The problem of course is, that you don’t control the media or the journalists – and you shouldn’t ever try to! Trying to push or persuade – or even bribe – journalists will cause repercussions.
In stead you should look for the interesting story, that a journalist might want to write or record and the newspaper, magazine or TV-channel might want to print or broadcast. The interesting story will be different in different media, but in general it has to be “news”. The journalist will look for stories that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Importance
- Identification
- Sensation
- Current interest
- Conflict
Importance is when a story gives you insight and knowledge about big or smaller issues in society – and especially if the story influences society in general – and the reader in particular. How important the story should be, depends on the media. Local media will often print articles with only local interest.
Identification is about creating a story, where the reader recognizes his own life in the story. Avoid too abstract stories.
Sensation is about finding the extraordinary story. The classic example, that every journalist all over the world knows, is the difference between the headlines “Dog bites man” and “Man bites dog”. The first happens every day, but “Man bites dog” is unusual and extraordinary.
Current interest is about understanding what is interesting for readers right now. If your story relates to something happening right now or to fx a very hot political topic, you have a much better chance of getting through. I expect that any story with relations to global warming will be printed right now…
Some topics have a long life cycle, and will have current interest for a long time, wheres other topics will only be interesting for a few days.
Conflict related stories are classical stories about heroes and villains – or The Little Man versus The System. Wars or neighbours fighting. Stories about who wins or who loses fx. sportmatches or elections. “The Lord of The Rings” is the ultimate conflict story – although a bit too long for a newspaper article – about the fight between good and evil.
If you can find an interesting conflict, you will make your article so much more powerful!
So what’s your story?
