What Journalists Want

While some companies often seem to appear in the limelight, for many insights suppliers and agencies, getting PR coverage is a struggle. But there are still opportunities to use PR to engage with the media, to the benefit of your own business and MRX as a whole. By thinking from the perspective of a journalist you can work out what the media wants and get your voice heard.

Put simply, journalists are not inherently interested in your company and your ability to do research. They want to create engagement and interest in their stories so that they can sell advertising, subscriptions, and future content.

 

To help you on your way, here is our list of the top four things that journalists want.

 

1. Knowledge

It should come as no surprise that our first (and, arguably, most important) point is about the content you’re providing. Journalists are actively seeking proven knowledge about industries, people, the media, audiences, and of course advertising. They’re looking for robust research data with impressive numbers (yes, sample sizes are important), including new data, studies and reports, all tied up into an engaging story. If the story can answer questions, even better. They want credible spokespeople with deep knowledge and expertise. Which is, clearly, great for companies working in MRX.

 

2. News

The media beast needs a constant supply of news which must add something different to the debate or raise new issues. For this, they need something truly not seen or heard before. They need breaking stories, demonstrating that they are very connected and engaged with their topic or area.  In short, the media is actively seeking exciting content (the more provocative and against the grain the better) which is interesting to their audience (they are actively seeking even more now, given there are so few paid journalists anymore and newsrooms have gone from 20 to 2 staff).

 

3. Relevance

Every journalist has an interest or area of expertise – something you can work out pretty easily by reading what they write about. And they in turn will be thinking all the time about their audience or readers. Journalists won’t be on board with publishing your press release or article if their readers won’t be interested in it. Also think about who you are and who you’re targeting, and why they should be interested in what you have to say. Content should be relevant to the target audience, but also to yourself. Your content should encapsulate your brand and showcase your expertise and what you can offer to clients. There’s no point in pitching to the media about topics which you don’t know much about.

 

4. Reliability

Finally, journalists need to work with people who will be able to respond on a tight schedule. Deadlines really are fixed deadlines, and journalists need to be able to count on you completely to provide the content, do the interview, or share the data you promised. It is your reputation that is at stake and there are no second chances. This is where PR agencies can really come in useful as they have formed solid relationships with target journalists and therefore have the trust already in place.

 

This might all seem rather difficult – why bother when you can just pay to get your clients to see your content? Well, we’d always argue that PR should be part of an integrated marketing strategy, but it does have some clear advantages over other marketing channels. As it is endorsed, in that the journalist or publication is talking about you, it provides credibility. It is the best way to communicate the point of view or philosophy of your organisation. PR promotes expertise like no other marketing tool – instead of saying you are an expert, PR proves it.

Ultimately, there is great value to gained for the whole insights profession from individual companies doing PR – MRX suffers from a poor profile and if we want to build engagement with participants and demonstrate the value of what we do as a whole, the more we reach out to the media, the better.

 

 

Photo by Matt Chesin on Unsplash