The pressures put on journalists to write for a wide range of media is greater than it has ever been before. Many have to provide online content, including images and video, to keep their employers happy as well as engage with different media types. The day of the broadsheet has all but gone and people are more likely to get their daily news and information online than anywhere else.
CEOs and business owners need to be acutely aware of the demand’s journalists face in what is a very competitive and challenging environment. Not only are journalists likely to be under immense time pressure but they may also not have as many resources to cover a particular story as they used to. For CEOs, making all interactions with journalists as efficient and accessible as possible is important.
CEOs must now understand how important social media and digital news are, for a start, and have processes in place to help engage with these. Half of journalists post stories on Facebook and Twitter, for instance, and an increasing number are asked to produce regular blog content, even on well-established news sites like the BBC.
Be Prepared for your Media Interview
The good news is that there is quite a lot you can do yourself to make these engagements with journalists run smoothly and still achieve their aim. The first is to be as flexible as possible so that you have the best chance of getting your news or point of view across.
Make sure that you have a ready supply of images, background information and other media that the journalist may need to write or tell their story. It can save them time and effort, something they will certainly be grateful for. It also ensures you can better control the narrative at least up to a point.
For any news story, you also need to make sure the right person with the right expertise is on hand and ready to give an interview or further information when required. If you must put together new visuals, ensure also that you have the ability to do this quickly and efficiently on demand.
Be Aware of News Stories
One of the big issues today is the ‘clickability’ of the story itself. Online news is likely to have greater interest if people are going to click through in greater numbers to a story. It’s essentially how the news business model works and what earns businesses money. If your story is engaging and interesting enough then the journalist may be likely to return to it in order to do a follow-up or spend more time on it in the first place.
That means CEOs need to stay up to date with what appeals to the general public and understand that journalists are under pressure to produce clickable content. It’s important to follow social media feeds for news outlets and tailor your approach to each individual one when you are looking to make a pitch for a news story or write a PR release.
Finally, you also need to have your own social media pages working with any particular news story so that they sync with the journalistic content and broaden your reach. For a more in-depth look at how you can engage with the media and get your story across to them talk to us about our media training options and we can create a bespoke package for your whole team.