Why the media may not like your company’s content, and how you can pivot to make it a proactive media relations resource
If your company had hundreds of thousands of followers either on social media or your newsletter lists, and if many of them were your key stakeholders like customers, it seems it would make complete sense to always communicate directly to them, excluding any news media, correct?
I mean, why not? Most companies have media following them anyway, so publishing online is like an automatic news release in a sense. While you may love your company’s content with unfettered delivery to your audiences, free of any filters, the media doesn’t necessarily share your passion.
With the advent of brands becoming their own “newsrooms” over the past decade, so to speak, media outlets were quite sensitive to seeing news stories online where previously they’d be pitched. As time has passed, media sentiment on branded content has become more accepting, especially as most companies that own news outlets have content marketing divisions of their own. It’s still a sensitivity to be mindful of. Don’t anticipate a warm response if you share examples of branded content on your social media first and want the media to emulate it afterward. However, I’ve shared company content as a resource for media to help facilitate the development of new stories, which has generally been well received as restating, it’s a resource, not an edict to the journalist to follow.
Regardless of your view of the media’s impact in telling or amplifying your story, I’ve tried to keep the media’s interests in mind as part of an overall business storytelling strategy. If you benefit from a robust and engaged following online, so too, do most media outlets. Furthermore, at some point, you will likely need or want to engage the media directly, especially in times of crisis. As part of your storytelling “mix”, giving away some of your best stories to news outlets, even if you know your content team could produce them more precisely in alignment with your company’s objectives, is a wise endeavour, from time to time, and can significantly amplify your storytelling in the right circumstance. It’s also beneficial to have someone else tell your business story through their channels first to mix things up from a content distribution point of view.
For example, with some campaigns on major announcements, we will work directly with media outlets with significant reach and influence, giving embargoed access to the media release, mainly to allow them to develop their editorial. Typically, they will post, publish, or broadcast at the exact moment the embargo expires. We’ll post moments after, or in some cases, at a negotiated time after the media’s post goes live.
Overall, this strategy has proven extremely successful, most of the time, as the media outlet gets their exclusive and we benefit from the additional earned media and other important metrics that come with media coverage. Exclusivity is not the only route, of course, as most media outlets have far greater reach both on traditional and online platforms, so pitching strategically to select outlets or all of them with media releases makes sense. Regardless of which route you go, you’ll have greater media relations success if the story you’re wanting to amplify with the media hasn’t been posted or shared before on your channels by your content team.
If this content is helpful to you, sign up to my free newsletter for more…
