Hot story ideas for businesses looking to get media coverage
November 7, 2008 by ShannonCherry
Filed under Marketing
If you can piggyback on one of the hot news stories in the next few days, you can get some great publicity for your business.
Here are some of this week’s hot stories:
- The election: what it means to your target market
- What breed is the ‘First Puppy’ going to be? Are you involved with pets? This is a no-brainer.
- The unemployment figures. Great story if you’re hiring! Also a great story for job coaches, resume writers, etc.
- The McCain/Palin relationship. Attention relationship experts: this one’s for you.
- Transitions: How to make them work. If you are an expert in change, you may want to pitch your tips and suggestions.
So what should you be doing with this information?
- Contact local reporters that are working on the stories that you’d like to pitch.
- Find out how they would like to receive a pitch.
- Write a pitch that gives some facts but also highlights why you’d be perfect to give more information on the story.
- Send out the pitch as the reporter would like.
- Follow up appropriately.
It’s reality text right now, but: I often feel that a good pitch would be to “open up” and tell what it’s like when a company hits the fan in an economic downturn like the one that we are experiencing world-wide, right now.
Not a typical sob story of lost dreams, but a realistic (real, damn it) picture of the impact on family life and how getting back into swing again is so tough but so essential. It would cover the time it takes, the reassessment of self-worth involved; the cost (maybe, as in my case: loss of home, family access and self confidence) and then a series of vignettes (interviews with business pros and experienced survivors) about the climb back.
It is (or would) be a short saga of the actuality of business failure and ideas about how to climb back to life – and a measure of fragile self-confidence based on the recognised value of such a negative experience? Title: “Me? Just crashed a business;what about you?”