Many journalists receive a lot of press releases and many press releases are remarkably similar to each other. What will make your story stand out from the rest?
Because we all work hard to develop our businesses, achievements seem exciting to us. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be so exciting for anyone else.
Take awards schemes, for example. It could be a big achievement to win an award in a specific sector, but if a journalist receives awards stories from three other businesses at the same time, it’ll seem like just another award accompanied by yet another photo of more people in evening dress.
Grabbing people’s attention and making the story individual is the challenge. Sometimes it can be really easy and at others it can be more of a challenge.
Start by thinking what is likely to excite your customers or target audience: they are the ones you want to impress. It’s also a good idea to analyse the types of story that specific publications publish so you can develop an angle that will fit in with their style.
What’s the point of this? To ensure that any press release or material you produce has got a better chance of success.
Time and effort spent on producing something that is unlikely to grab people’s attention is probably better spent on doing something that will work.
With a bit of thought and practice it becomes easier to identify an interesting angle for your story as you learn what excites your readers and what journalists want to publish. This will improve your chances of obtaining valuable PR coverage.
