June 15th, 2009 • 10:06
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the third of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).
Keep Current: Make sure before you send out a release that you’ve been reading who’s been writing about similar topics recently.
Image Credit: Run Stella Run by Laertes licensed by Creative Commons 2.0
Before you write that release (or before you talk to your writer about it) look at the twitter streams and RSS feeds of your media people. What are they talking about right now? Figure out how your story applies to the current news. Sometimes this is easy. Everyone’s talking about an expo or event, and you’re going to be there. Your headline just about writes itself, then: “ACME Inc. to showcase new widget at WIDGETCON Convention in San Diego.” Sometimes this is more of a stretch. Everyone’s talking about an expo or event in your industry, and you want to announce that you’ve just introduced a new product. “ACME Inc. debuts new widget that compares with/contrasts with/supersedes WIDGETCON theme,” for example.
Either way, you’ve roped the news that’s happening into your press release, so then when you send it out over the wire (if you don’t take too long to write it) you’ll be riding the crest of the current events wave. Even better, if you’re insightful, is to write about what the bloggers and reporters will be talking about in three days or next week. This is an inexact science unless you’re Nostradamus, but if you are plugged in well enough into your community to predict that kind of thing with any accuracy, you’ll make a killing when reporters and bloggers type that search term into Google News to figure out what’s the word on new topic “X”.
If you’ve been in your market for a long time, you probably have a better idea what trends come and go, and will be better able to predict what you should write about. If you’re talking with a professional writer, be sure to tell him or her what it is that you think will be trending news; he or she may well be able to give you ideas for a few topics that you can write about to cover your bases and increase the likelihood that you’ll be searched out by some blogger or journalist on a deadline.
And you’ll find that once you’ve written your release to be current, you’ll have an easier time pitching your story to reporters and blogger. You don’t have to write every release as commentary on current news–they’ll read as dated in a year or so, and you want to keep some of your releases sounding more relevant if someone digs through your back stacks of releases–but when you’re hunting for a topic idea to start with, it doesn’t hurt to pick ideas that will help get you attention from reporters & journalists by the nature of your topic matter.
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