Newsworthy Content – It Matters
In public relations there is one aspect that is critical for success – Media Relations. The relationships we build in the media are crucial to determining our success or failure as public relations professionals. In addition to relationships, the content that you want disseminated has to be newsworthy to the form of media under consideration. Most journalists see these five characteristics as news:
- Consequence
- Interest
- Timeliness
- Proximity
- Prominence
Ask yourself the following questions to see if you’re on the right track:
Is the story local? When stories are local, it only makes sense that it would catch interest best in the designated area where it happened. For our Hair O’ The Dog event we received a lot of press from most of the local print mediums here in Philadelphia, since it is a very well known event based in Philadelphia. It wouldn’t be a good idea to try to send information about Philadelphia to a New York print medium, because it would not be used by the print medium or be helpful to the firm.
Is the information unique or unusual? Everyone enjoys hearing something different for a change, and that goes for the news as well. When there is a story that is very unique, it will get attention from the media. An example of this would be the Dirty Lungs Campaign Blog I wrote several weeks ago. Since it was an unusual, unique, and clever campaign, not done in the U.S., someone found it to be newsworthy and wrote an article about the campaign.
Is the material timely? The timing of the message also determines if the information is considered news. The day after a Sunday evening awards show, we may post nice hairstyles onto a client’s Instagram page, and it is received well by others since it is something of current nature. It can also be a good idea to have content that introduces a new trend or relates to something that is currently happening in the world.
Does it create human interest? Almost 90%, if not more, of our jobs are based off human interest, whether it’s with a client, the media, or the public. So it is imperative that our content create human interest, as well.
Does it create strong local/regional/national/international interest? A great example for this question would be the upcoming Sochi 2014 Olympics. There are news stories everywhere about this event since it has such a strong presence of interest from people locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
In closing, the more of these questions you answer yes to, the better chance of getting that message pitched to the desired media channel.