I’m Sophie, Head of PR and the newest addition to the growing team at The Word Agency.
With a decade in PR behind me, I know a few things about what it really takes to get clients’ stories out into the world.
Whether it’s a great broadcast feature, an interview with a key journalist or front page news, as any good PR pro will know, getting a story in front of a journalist can be challenging at the best of times.
Ever felt overwhelmed by your email inbox? You’re not alone.
According to research by Warwick Business School, the average UK office worker receives 121 emails per day – sound like a lot? Well, spare a thought for national journalists.
Double, triple, even quadruple that number can land in a journalist’s inbox every single day. And, worse yet, only a handful of those will make it past the dreaded delete button.
So, amongst hundreds of others, how do we cut through the inbox noise and make sure your story is the one a journalist can’t bring themselves to delete?
The Bogart test
As New York Sun editor John B. Bogart famously said:
“When a dog bites a man, that is not news.
But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
Everyone thinks their own story deserves to be heard. But there’s a huge difference between having a nice story to tell and having a story that’s actually newsworthy.
There’s a few important questions I always ask myself before reaching out to a journalist:
- Is it relevant to their subject area?
- What makes it different?
- What’s new?
- Does it solve or identify a problem?
- Does it offer a unique view on something in the current news cycle
- What impact will it have? On what or who?
Think of it as the Bogart test – ‘Person launches product similar to lots of other products’ isn’t news. ‘Person who overcame adversity to launch a product that could change the lives of thousands’ is.
Perfecting the elevator pitch
Journalists are busy people. You usually have a matter of seconds to grab their interest, which means the snappier the better, whether it’s an email or pitching over the phone.
Just like a strong elevator pitch, a story needs to be summed up in a matter of seconds.
That means stripping out the waffle and getting straight to the point.
A lot goes into creating a strong PR story, but a great pitch will often be no longer than 2 or 3 lines.
The goal is to give journalists just enough key information to pique their curiosity while giving them enough creative wiggle room to put their own stamp on a story, all while keeping your story front and centre.
The power of the subject line
There’s a reason clickbait headlines are so effective. They make you want to click. It’s the same principle with a subject line.
One of our biggest hurdles is getting a journalist to open the email at all. So I think about what would make me want to click on something in a sea of boring subject lines.
Sometimes it’s making someone laugh. Sometimes it’s something so out of the ordinary that it instantly makes them want to know more. And sometimes? It’s just downright cheekiness.
In an inbox full of dull, the goal is to be that splash of unignorable colour.
The little black book
Strong relationships with journalists is where the real value lies in a good PR strategy.
Knowing what a journalist wants and crucially, how they want it is what comes into play when your story is up against hundreds of others.
High quality coverage rarely comes from what we’d call in the industry ‘spray and pray’.
The coverage that will really get you noticed starts with getting your story in front of the right people, at the right time, not sending hundreds of irrelevant emails in hope that someone will publish.
So never underestimate all that time us PR folk spend building our little black books. It might be weeks, months, even years down the line, but a good PR will have a trusted list of journalists they can go back to time and time again because we know exactly what will interest them.
And that’s how you bag scroll-stopping coverage.
Want to chat about how we can help to supercharge your PR strategy?
Drop me an email at sophie@thewordagency.co.uk