How to Take Advantage of the Challenges Facing News Organizations

PR expert Edward Segal contributed today's post. He has placed stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and is author of Profit by Publicity.

The challenges you face in convincing the media to do stories about you or your company is matched only by the challenges editors and reporters face in gathering and reporting the news.

In order to produce their news products—such as a daily newspaper, the latest posts on their Web site or social media platforms, or nightly TV news program—editors, producers and their staff must contend with a never-ending series hurdles. These include:

• Making decisions on which events or activities to cover, especially in the face of late-breaking news.

• Weeding out the truly newsworthy press releases from the hundreds of apparently superfluous, irrelevant or poorly written ones that they receive every day.

• Fact-checking stories.

• Finding the best available experts to interview, explain or provide perspective on  technical or complex stories.

• Maintaining staff morale in the face of budget cutbacks, mergers and acquisitions among news organizations, and the creeping influence of some advertising departments on the news judgments of editorial personnel.

• Providing enough time and resources so reporters can adequately research stories and be properly prepared to interview people for them.

• Ensuring that the work of their reporters, editors and producers meets the criteria of good journalism. 

How do you turn the media’s lemons into your lemonade? To ensure that, despite their problems and difficulties, you’re able to convince news organizations to do the stories you or your company want done? By going the extra mile to help make their jobs—and their decision to do stories about you—as easy as possible. Here’s how:

Help them with their homework. Provide them with as much background information as you think is appropriate about your story, including news releases, fact sheets or other stories that have been written about you or the topic. 

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Give editors and reporters as much advance notice as possible about scheduled events such as news-making special events.

Show them the story. Find the best possible visuals to "show" your story as well as tell it; and be sure to let the news organizations know about your visuals when you contact them. 

Give them ideas. Call editors and reporters with story ideas that you think they may be interested in, even though those ideas may not result in news coverage about you. By showing them you are a resource of information and ideas, they will be more receptive to your calls later when you pitch them a story about yourself. 

Provide good sound bites. Once you have the media’s attention, take full advantage of the opportunity by providing them with the quotes they need to help tell their story to their audiences. The better your quotes, the more likely it is that they’ll be used… and that the reporters will come back to you in the future for more interviews.

3 Phrases You Must Not Use in 2016

The year's about to end.

It's list time.

Mine consists of three pretentious phrases everyone in business should retire.

Across the enterprise. Romulans fired torpedoes across the Enterprise. Throughout the company is clear enough.

Take offline. Employed by teleconference leaders to quash unwelcome discussions. If drop it is too brusque, hold that thought would work.

Go viral. Shared content shouldn't be likened to SARS and Ebola. Become popular sounds just fine.

Which phrases would you ban?

Trust versus Trustiness

Word derivations say a lot.

The English word trust comes from the German word Trost, which means "comfort."

It's no secret marketers face a comfort deficit of Biblical proportions, as betrayal feels like the new normal.

Without warranties from their friends—and even with them—customers aren't comfortable doing business with us any more.

How, as a marketer, do you narrow the trust deficit? How do you build a comfort zone where customer engagement and conversation can begin?

Not by erecting a facade, a put-on Seth Godin calls trustiness. 

Four years ago, Godin said, "Building trust is expensive. You can call it an expense or an investment, or merely cut corners and work on trustiness instead."

Marketers who labor at building trustiness go for the cheap fix. Trust, on the other hand, takes time and money.

"Trust is built when no one is looking, when you think you have the option of cutting corners and when you find a loophole," Godin says. "Trustiness is what happens when you use trust as a PR tool."

While a minority, the Real McCoys are patently obvious, Godin says. They are "the people and institutions that will do what they say and say what they mean."

Godin points to the "perverse irony" in masquerading as trustworthy: "The more you work on your trustiness, the harder you fall once people discover that they were tricked."

What are you working on?

Think Evergreen

Pity the poor cereus, which blooms but a day.

Marketing content's a lot like that.

When measured by clicks, most content flowers but a day or two.

And deservedly so, when marketers are conditioned to think news.

But after all the work of content creation, you'd hope your effort enjoys more than a moment in the sun.

That's why I like evergreen content.

"Evergreen content answers your customers' most common questions, and rarely goes out of date," Mark Schaefer writes in The Content Code.

You can, for example, Tweet once every month about an old evergreen blog post, and receive new rounds of likes, comments and shares from people who missed it, Schaefer says.

You need to stop worrying the content is old and "view evergreen content is an investment in an asset for your business," Schaefer writes.

"If you bought a new tractor for your farm or a new truck for your plumb business, you wouldn't let it just sit around not being used. An investment in content is no different."  

2016: The Creative Comeback

The Creative Revolution inspirited marketers in the mid '60s.

Will the Creative Comeback do so again in the mid teens?

CMO predicts it will, in a year-end roundup of expert opinions.

The technicians have had their day.

The results?

One in three campaigns fizzle.

Perhaps the creatives' time has returned.

"Blow up any process that isn't dynamic and collaborative," Darren McColl, SapientNitro, told CMO. "Creativity in a world of technology takes constant collaboration, not process."

Here's what others had to say:

Marketers, please come out from behind your tech and data and start acting like humans. You’ll be amazed at what can happen. — Jeff Pundyk, The Economist Group

Do something unexpected, launch a breakthrough, challenge a leader, 'wow' consumers, make memorable moments, engage in new conversations. — Ed Vlacich, National Brands

Effective creativity now requires pairing shrewd psychology with showmanship. In 2016, I resolve to channel, daily, Daniel Kahneman and P.T. Barnum. — Marsha Lindsay, Lindsay, Stone & Briggs

In an age where brands know more than ever about our customers, embracing creativity and fearlessness should no longer be seen as risk taking but instead as smart, innovational thinking. — James Earp, Razorfish

Be bold, be creative, but be human. Think beyond getting attention; design for engagement. And design beyond impressions, think expressions. — Brian Solis, Altimeter Group

Next year, we’re daring to go from being valued to being loved. We’ll be showcasing the power and value of creating an emotional connection. — Susan Ganeshan, Clarabridge