How to get Media to take notice of your business

The NAB Small Business Summit was last week and it was a bit of a revelation! After missing the lunch (long story!) on Tuesday I turned up to see Rebecca Derrington from SourceBottle facilitate a panel discussion about ‘How to get the media to take notice of your Business’. Other panelists were Warwick Ponder – Corporate Communications Manager, EFTPOS, Jessica Gardner – Editor, Enterprise section Australian Financial Review, and Oliver Milman – Editor, Startup Smart.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time! The final panelist had been unable to make it and I was invited to take his place. Not being the shy and retiring type, I readily agreed and 3 minutes later we got started.

Here’s what I learned about news journalism and how it differs from product PR by listening to my fellow panelists:

• Ring first, check if they are on deadline and then pitch your story. If they want more info THEN send the email. If you send a ‘cold’ email it will probably go unnoticed
• Most journos now have Twitter feeds showing on their computers all day long as they scour for breaking stories
• News journalists rarely, if ever, look to Facebook for news leads. Use Facebook posts for engaging your customers.
• If you pitch a story to a journalist and they are lukewarm, they are always open to you changing the angle and re-pitching
• Being tenacious and staying in touch is an annoying aspect of their job, but it does tend to work (they reluctantly admitted!)

And from Warwick – keeping the relationship alive with journalist contacts is crucial to getting cut-through

So if you’re pitching a News related story, take note of what these journalists had to say. – Jules