Telling Your News – Press Releases
What Makes A Story?
Most news items in trade and industry mags are of
general interest in a ‘what’s-happening-in-the-industry’ kind of way, and are largely provided by way of press releases sent in by outfits just like yours. It certainly doesn’t have to be an earth-shattering event which will have readers sitting on the edge of their seats – which is just as well for editors because there aren’t many stories like this coming in to him regularly.
Here’s a checklist of story categories for you to consider. A bit later on we’ll look at how you would write each of them up.
Orders And Installations
This could be a fairly large order you’ve just received, or an interesting one (first order for a new product you announced recently, your first ever export order, or a big-name customer like a multinational oil company or airline). This category would also embrace post-order ‘installation’ or ‘delivery’ stories.
Some organisations (and particularly some government departments) are extremely fussy about confidentiality, and some have policies forbidding them from endorsing another company’s products or services. If you come up against any of these, don’t risk upsetting a customer by arguing with them. Better to bow out gracefully and find another story.
New Products
This is a popular type of story with editors, especially if you can describe the product as what a journalist thinks of as ‘new. free or amazing’. Also announce significant enhancements or redesigns to existing products now more powerful, faster, reduced price, whatever.
Personnel Appointments
Known in the trade as ‘body shots’, these are popular especially if they are customer-facing, e.g. area representative. sales/marketing manager, or senior folk such as CEOs and Board directors. Always try to send a captioned picture (‘mug-shot’) of the subject with body shots.
Exhibition Attendance
If you will be showing at some well-known trade fair or exhibition, here’s a story. A number of magazines run show features about a month beforehand, so send out a release about what you will be showing. Don’t send out up-beat releases afterwards, saying how many people came on to your stand and how much interest was shown; it’s not news. But if you grabbed a decent order or contract at the show – that’s news!
General News
A loose category, this one, but not to be overlooked. For example, if you have appointed a new distributor in this country or overseas (or been appointed as one yourself), moved into new premises, seen your sales go up by a hefty percentage during a period when others are struggling, sponsored a well-known charitable event or sports team – that’s news, too!
Beware, however, of putting out stories with a negative slant. ‘A member of staff is leaving’ (unless he/she is retiring after many years’ service); ‘we have withdrawn our sponsorship of X’; ‘contrary to any rumours you may have heard, our financial position is sound’. Anything with a whiff of failure about it is open to be treated as bad news. A Cromwellian desire to paint yourself ‘warts and all’ may sound like a bold, open corporate policy; unfortunately, warts are bad news.
Latch On To Current Running Stories
You may gain quite a lot of mileage by latching on to a big story that’s running in the press at the moment.
Here’s an example. Some years ago one of our clients, a small and somewhat insignificant engineering company, managed to increase its turnover by about 30 per cent during a period when the national news pages were dominated by doom-and-gloom stories about the failing economy, depression, corporate failures, etc. We put out a simple news story announcing the 30 per cent increase.
A small company doing better than the big boys in a recession was a happy story amidst the almost universally bad news, and the media started to beat a path to our client’s door. Our only problem was how to fend off journalists who wanted to come and interview the client face to face, because we didn’t want them to see just how small the company really was! The telephone can be a great blessing sometimes ...
Similar things happened during the wars in the Falklands and the Gulf. The press contracted sustained bouts of war fever, and any alert PR person whose company had a product or service that was in any way connected with the Army, Navy or Air Force found an excuse to mention it in a press release. We know of one company that made a small computer device which was used in army tanks and, er, just happened to develop a fairly minor enhancement to it during the Falklands War. Good thinking, Batman, and the story deserved the good take-up it received.
So keep alert! Wars, floods, economic ups and downs, Olympic Games, general elections, flights to Mars, whatever’s making headline news on the front pages – if you can find a way of latching on to it with a related story of your own. it may well be PR bonus time for you.